Fever Dreams
by Wordie
Summary: Over a year has passed since the freeze of Arendelle. But now a new and entirely unexpected danger has laid siege to the city: a deadly contagion whose victims are taken by an intense fever. Desperate to protect the people - and, most especially, her sister - Elsa does everything in her power to save them.
1. Chapter 1

**QUICK NOTES:**

**Hi. This is my second bit of multi-chapter fiction. **

**As I've mentioned elsewhere, everything I've written since my first story ("A Summer's Tale") pretty much follows in the same universe. **_**This**_** piece should make decent sense without having to read **_**that**_** one, though I may reference some non-canon events every now and then. No problem. You'll be able to orient yourself just fine.**

**Nothing about Arendelle, or its peeps, is mine.**

* * *

**Chapter 1**

It started in the village—or, perhaps more accurately, in the port district of Arendelle. There was no way of knowing _precisely_ which vessel had been the carrier, of course. In later years, learned men and women would be able to both trace the route of the pathogen and uncover the means by which it was able to infect so many, so quickly. But at this time, during the early reign of Her Majesty Queen Elsa, it was still very much a mystery.

Part of the problem had to do with the actual streets of Arendelle because, though they were tidy and picturesque, they were also situated quite narrowly. The people did not mind; they were a frank and familiar sort. Nevertheless, their homes—with their freshly painted doors and their bright window boxes—crowded up against each other in a way that was cozy but that would also prove to exacerbate the problem when it arrived. And arrive it did, in the tail end of autumn, when the last of the leaves released their tenuous hold and fluttered lightly to the ground.

On such a day as this, the princess of Arendelle liked to walk along the margins of her city and gaze up into the wilderness beyond its borders. Though the castle gates had been opened to the world, at last—and though she was surrounded by the love of her sister and of the many people she had met in the months following the _incident_ with Hans—she felt the absence of her first and dearest friend like an aching tenderness in her heart. For this reason, she had fallen into the habit of watching every day for his return along the forest road.

"Do you _have_ to go?" she'd complained to him. This had been back on that first midsummer—just after the thaw—when he'd been eager to ride up the mountain pass to salvage what was left of the harvest.

"Yes, Anna," he'd said for the umpteenth time. "I've already lost half the season."

The princess had watched him sullenly, then, and considered sabotaging his efforts by stealing his reindeer in the night. She'd been fairly certain the animal would play along.

"Never mind _that_," she'd insisted. "Better luck next year, right?" She'd shrugged and smiled and given him a teasing little shove on the shoulder, but he'd simply looked at her with his usual expression of fond annoyance.

"I have to make a living," he'd said.

_Not anymore_, she'd thought to herself—and then immediately flushed crimson at the idea. _What_?

Outside the ice trade, though, the kingdom was thriving. Its isolation had ended with that of the royal family, and newly formed alliances with its more southerly and easterly neighbors made for a great deal more bustle and excitement along the city streets. This excitement, in turn, led to change—and Anna, of all people, was ready for change.

To a certain degree, the queen's council had foreseen that an increased volume of people would lead to an increase in conflict within the walls of the city. To that end, the council had added to the constabulary and found, to their delight, that peace was relatively well maintained.

No one had anticipated, however, that this new policy of openness would leave Arendelle vulnerable to dangers of an entirely different sort.

The princess first became aware of such dangers on one of her late evening walks along the wildwood fringe. As usual, she was accompanied by a walking, talking snowman with a penchant for hugs.

"It won't be long now," he observed eagerly, sniffing the air with his bright carrot nose.

Anna nudged her toe under a loose pile of foliage. The trees themselves were gilded beautifully in the waning light of day, and their fallen leaves made a pleasant rustling sound as she brushed them with her feet. In the last week, she'd been able to feel the air changing around her. The first chill of fall had already blown down from the mountains; it was only a matter of time. The villagers lamented this, as well as the shorter days and the encroaching darkness of winter, but Anna felt a thrill with the arrival of the cold—because the cold meant the turning of the season, and the turning of the season meant Kristoff.

"All this time, I was dreaming of summer," mused the creature at her side. "And I had no idea how beautiful _fall_ could be." He looked up at her rapturously.

"It is, isn't it?" sighed Anna, but she was only half listening. Ahead of them, lights began to twinkle in the village. "Come on, Olaf."

It was getting late, and Kai didn't like the princess wandering alone at this hour. Not that she _was_ alone—she had Olaf with her, after all. And not that she was _wandering_, either. She knew exactly where she was, where she had been, and where she was going. Hers was a deliberate stroll, one that she tended to do every evening before dusk, when the light was low and full of depth and the trees cast long shadows and the water lay flat in the harbor and the air was soft ...

Well, until today. Today, the air held its first bite of winter.

The villagers were readying themselves for the season. She saw men stacking firewood and women airing out those heavier woolens that had been stored away for the summer. They were busily repairing any weaknesses in the infrastructure of the city, weatherproofing their homes and stalls in the best way they knew how—which was right and familiar, and they went about it with practical good cheer, as they had done for generations.

Anna greeted them as she passed, stopping now and then to converse with one of the many villagers she'd come to know well.

"We're prepared, Your Highness," remarked one such villager, a seamstress whose small house contained seven children, a dog, and a husband. "And at the very least, we have each other to keep warm."

She laughed heartily at that. Anna smiled.

"I'm glad to hear it," she replied. "Is there anything you need, Freya? Anything for the children?"

The woman shook her head and suddenly grew sober.

"No, ma'am. Not I." She hesitated. "But perhaps you might see to poor Mister Hjorth along the way, there." Freya nodded down the street.

"What is it?"

"Aches in the joints, Your Highness. Fatigue ..." The woman's eyes were sad. "He's got the fever, Princess, and I suppose there's naught to do but make him comfortable and see to the needs of his family."

Anna followed her gaze. "How many?" she asked quietly.

"Three bairns, ma'am."

They fell silent. Anna closed her eyes to the wretchedness of these tidings. Those poor children. That poor man …

"Thank you, Freya," she said at last. She smoothed her skirts and bade the seamstress good night. "I'll call on the family now, before I head back to the castle—"

"Oh, _no_ Princess!" cried the other. "You mustn't!"

"But—"

"Send the queen's creature," Freya interrupted, gesturing urgently toward Olaf. The snowman tilted his head and regarded her quizzically. "I beg your pardon, sir," she continued. "But we can't let Princess Anna endanger herself, however well she means."

Olaf nodded. This made sense—it's not like he was capable of contracting the ailment, himself. His body was made of packed snow.

Anna reluctantly agreed. "Please, Olaf," she said, kneeling before him to emphasize the seriousness of the Hjorth family's plight. "We need to help them …"

The snowman smiled.

"We will," he said kindly, grasping her hand with his own, crude fingers. Then he dropped down from the stoop and toddled off into the gloom.

* * *

**I will spell correctly for you. And I will punctuate plurals and possessives properly, too. As for the rest, what can I say? I have a weakness for fragments and conjunctions. And contemplative run-ons. And ellipses. I really like ellipses.**

…


	2. Chapter 2

**QUICK NOTES:**

**This chapter has been edited for development. In case you're revisiting ...**

**Arendelle and its peeps aren't mine.**

* * *

**Chapter 2**

News of the man's death reached Arendelle castle a day later. He was not the first to succumb to the terrible fever, but he _was_ the first able-bodied _young_ man to do so, and this alarmed the queen a great deal.

"He was 38 years old," she murmured, staring out the window of her study to the village beyond the castle walls. Few people had ventured out of their homes. They were fearful of the spreading disease, oblivious to the fact that confining themselves to their narrow rooms only increased the likelihood that they would contract it.

Afraid of what they didn't understand, they thought they could _hide_ from the plague. Elsa gave a short, humorless laugh and brought her hands to her temples. This could very well turn disastrous.

"He was a healthy man," she continued. "Fit. Employed at the docks, where he was esteemed for his physical strength."

The two men before her exchanged a worried glance.

"This is true," said the first. Elsa turned her back to the window and addressed his companion.

"Tell me about the other victims."

The second gentleman pulled down on his cuffs, an agitated gesture. He was one of the many physicians appointed by the court to advise the queen on matters of public health, and he was not entirely confident in her presence. She was an imposing figure—a kind and admirable queen, for certain, but also distinctly aloof. He found himself cowed by her beauty.

"The first confirmed case was an elderly woman," he began, "beloved by her family of course, but already in decline." He paused to clear his throat and glanced at the woman standing stiffly before him. She nodded and gestured for him to continue.

"The second was a retired milliner, not so advanced in age but generally in poor health. He had a history of digestive complaints and was prone to fits of epilepsy ..."

The physician continued along this vein, uninterrupted, detailing the various instances in which this strange malady had proven fatal within the population of Arendelle. It was a morbid conversation, one that caused the queen untold distress, but it was a necessary one. Each casualty was tragic, of course, but every one of them had been associated with the very old, the very young, or the already infirm. Every one of them, that is, until the case of Mr. Hjorth.

"Do we know the cause?" inquired Elsa. She twisted her hands distractedly, painting her fingertips an icy blue. This did not escape the physician's notice, and he made an involuntary step backward.

"Not at this time, no," interjected the first gentleman, a member of the queen's council of state. "We are looking into it ..."

Elsa nodded again. "What about the mountain settlements?"

"They do not appear to have been affected, ma'am."

She looked at them blankly. "How is this possible?"

Neither man was capable of a response, and so neither offered one.

"Fredrik," she said firmly. "I need you to send a man to each—"

But the councilman interrupted her with a shake of his head. "They will not receive any travellers from the castle or village," he said apologetically. "They have heard of our plight, and they are afraid …"

Elsa sighed. She could hardly blame them. Already vulnerable to the harsh realities of life at high altitudes, in such a wilderness, and being so far removed from the amenities of city life, the people of the mountain settlements were isolating themselves from the problem as best they could. And that meant turning a blind eye to those in need.

Arendelle was in need, though, and the people were looking to her for guidance. She could see that the spark of desperation had begun to kindle in their eyes, particularly in those of the residents along the crowded flanks of the city, where the populace was less affluent and frequently less educated. It was an irony that did not escape her: that those who were denigrated for their lack of culture were generally the more astute and farsighted of all the citizenry. And indeed, the underprivileged were most at risk at the moment. Elsa saw that they knew this and that they were afraid. What had begun as a routine seasonal ague was fast becoming epidemic as family, friends, and neighbors fell—one by one—into a feverish stupor. It was one from which few recovered.

Fredrik broke into her thoughts as though he had been reading them. "Queen Elsa," he began, his voice uncertain. "Have you given any thought to … your own protection?"

Elsa started. "What?"

"It would perhaps be wise for you to … close the castle gates to outsiders," he ventured. "At least until the danger has passed."

"Absolutely not."

"But, Your Majesty—"

"I will _not_ hide behind these walls and watch my people suffer," she said vehemently.

There was a pause. "What about the Princess Anna?"

The queen stiffened. A few stray snowflakes drifted down from the rafters above, and Fredrik and Mr. Iverson became acutely aware of the temperature dropping several degrees around them.

She returned her attention to the physician. "How bad is it, Mr. Iverson?"

The man hesitated. "It is not good, Your Majesty," he said at last. "The rate of infection is increasing."

"Are the people alarmed?"

"In the lower districts, ma'am ..."

Elsa released a shaky sigh.

It would not do to set the palace apart from the rest of the city. Murmurs of unrest were already wending their way through the cobbled streets and back alleys of Arendelle's working class neighborhoods. It was a pauper's disease, they said—a condition for the masses. The kingdom was, in fact, a prosperous one—favored in both husbandry and trade—and the distribution of wealth throughout its lands was appreciable. Indeed, the growing middle class was perhaps the largest constituency of its population, but as in most societies, there was a minority of poor as well as a significant class of well-to-do aristocrats. And in the eyes of those poor, and the hardworking middle orders, this condition was not for the privileged.

Were the queen to sequester herself and the various residents of Arendelle castle behind its gates, things would quickly unravel in the city. She could not do this to her people.

And yet … and yet … How to protect her sister, whom she'd only just welcomed back into her life? How to insulate those most dear to her—Gerda, who mothered her relentlessly as a child, and even more so after the death of her parents. It was she whose compassion Elsa mirrored in all things as queen of the realm. And Kai, the man who taught her to assert herself—to stand firm before those who assumed they could bully this fragile woman in the interests of their own royal agendas. These two were mother and father to her in those turbulent years before being crowned queen, and their behavior did not change now that she was the leader of the entire kingdom …

These thoughts warred within her heart for some time, but at length, she spoke.

"All right then," she said. "We must do our best to reassure them. Continue to investigate the source of this ... affliction. In the meantime, what can be done to contain it?"

The men were silent.

"Gentlemen?"

"We don't know, Your Majesty. It's impossible to determine who may already carry the infection."

Elsa frowned. "I don't understand."

"This illness, Queen Elsa ... it resembles the cholera that swept through Arendelle two decades ago. Some may carry it without ever succumbing to the fever; others may walk about for _days_ before falling ill."

"How do we know this is not the cholera?"

"Subtle differences, Your Majesty. In this case, it is neither dehydration nor lack of nourishment that is the ultimate cause of death."

Elsa waited for him to finish. When he did not, she pressed him further. "What is it?" she demanded. "What is the cause?"

Mr. Iverson met her eyes and faltered. Then he said, "The fever, Your Majesty. It is the fever that kills."


	3. Chapter 3

**QUICK NOTES:**

**This chapter has been edited for development. I've added more description of the landscape for two reasons: 1) because it's so meaningful to Kristoff, and 2) because a specific detail within it will have significance later.**

**Arendelle and its peeps aren't mine.**

* * *

**Chapter 3**

High above Arendelle, where the early snow lay like a fine white dust upon the earth, Kristoff Bjorgman secured the last blocks of ice onto his rig. The summer months had been productive and the ice plentiful, and he had a good haul, here, at the end of the harvesting season. Now he would return to the village and distribute each block to his buyers before taking residence in the loft above the queen's stables, where he would spend the winter and earn his keep. He would not be returning to the mountains again until spring.

"All right, old friend," he murmured, scratching a large reindeer behind the ears. "Time to head down."

But neither made a move to depart just yet. Instead, they regarded the sweeping landscape before them, each lost in their own thoughts. Downslope from the mountain's flanks lay a deep arctic tarn, already locked in solid ice from one bank to its opposite. The sky above was brushed with thin clouds in a faded palette, creating a backdrop against which the highlands and their scattered groves of spruce stood out in sharp relief. A rivulet of bracing freshwater ran from beneath the ice and over a lip in the basin. It made its way through the rough terrain, increasing in speed and volume as it meandered and then raced and then plunged toward the sea.

He shook his head as though to clear it, though why he'd allowed the queen and her sister to persuade him to winter in Arendelle in the _first_ place remained something of a mystery to him. He'd spent the better part of six months, last year, suffocating in the narrow streets and starched threads of the city and generally pining for the open wilderness. Village life didn't really suit him, not to mention the way of things at the castle. It just wasn't his usual habitat, and if he was going to be honest with himself, he didn't particularly enjoy his time there.

Except ...

Well, except for Anna.

But he dismissed that thought as quickly as it had arisen. What was the point? His, um, _friendship_ with the princess was tolerated by those in authority, though Elsa encouraged it well enough. Still, some day—and some day soon, he mused bitterly—Anna would be given away to a prince of substantial provenance. Married off to form some sort of contractual alliance with one of the prosperous states in the south.

But then an echo of Sven's voice cut into his thinking.

_Would the queen allow it_?

Kristoff sighed, and his breath condensed lightly in the air before him. Would she have a choice? His attachment to the princess was frankly inappropriate, and whether or not Queen Elsa approved of it was of little consequence. She would be pressured from all corners of influence to engage her sister advantageously, and even her own, genuine fondness for Anna's loyal reindeer king would not be enough to keep the two of them close …

Not that he wanted to _marry_ her or anything. The thought made him wince. _Of course_ he didn't want to marry her—where had that even _come_ from? It's true that they'd shared a rather harrowing experience the previous summer, but they'd hardly spent a fortnight in each other's company before he'd had to depart for the glaciated hills of the outer kingdom. And even then, it was an odd sort of friendship: clumsy, exasperating, but most of all ... uncomplicated. They could sit in companionable stillness as they watched the sun set, for example, though this had been no small challenge for Kristoff when they'd first met. He would never have described himself as feeling at ease in the presence of others—certainly not before he'd met the princess. Somehow, though, in spite of his awkward silences and her equally awkward compulsion to fill them, they'd grown comfortable with each other.

"Guess what?" she'd said to him once, positively _trembling_ with the chance to withhold information from him.

He'd shaken his head at her, raising his hands hopelessly before letting them fall loose at his sides.

"How could I even _do_ that?" he'd retorted. "There are about as many possibilities for … _whatever_ it is that's going on in your head … as there are, I don't know, stars at night. Or, well, _snowflakes_ on the North Mountain. In winter."

She'd wrinkled her nose at him. "Come _on_," she'd said.

"Fine. You've adopted a truffle pig named George."

Anna had snorted. It was loud and indelicate and totally unappealing—and also adorable.

"You've discovered a rare flower whose, uh, nectar can make a person young. Like, forever."

"That'd be nice, I guess."

"You're ready to admit that ice is better than chocolate."

"_Riiiiiiight_."

"It's true."

And the princess had poked him in the chest with an aggressive finger.

"Says _you_," came the rejoinder. "And you'd _best_ keep it to your_self_. Blaspheme in my presence again, _Kristoffer_, and I will _rearrange_ your _face_."

Every other word was emphasized with a stab of the finger, so that Kristoff had had to cross his arms defensively. The idea of grabbing her wrist or swatting her away was not even remotely an option, and he suspected that she was well aware of this. Enthusiastically so.

"You asked!" he'd cried.

"And _you_ were _wrong_. Now try again."

…

…

"You're going back to the asylum," he'd continued archly.

"Nuh-uh. I mean, not any time soon."

"You never should have left in the first place," he'd said mildly, and they'd walked on in amiable silence for a moment. He remembered looking out across the pier at the easy play of light on water. At the time, he'd been willing to allow that ice in its liquid state could be as impressive as the stuff he harvested.

It was a moment of weakness, to be sure.

Anyway. As long as he ignored the unfortunate, er, _context_ of their strange little bond, it was enough. Their friendship was simple and it was warmth and it was perfect.

But he _couldn't_ ignore that unfortunate context, could he? The fact remained that Anna was a princess. She was royalty, and he … Well, he hauled ice for a living. No, it was just a dream—a silly and stupid dream—to think that he had a chance at … whatever. He would lose Anna, in the end, just like he'd lost everyone else in his life. It'd be better for him to leave before he got too attached.

What he failed to recognize, though—and what his reindeer friend could easily have pointed out to him—was that it was _already_ too late.

He should have stayed in the mountains, he mused. He _knew_ this. And yet. And yet ...

The reindeer tossed his head and chaffed at his harness, as much to say "_Let's go_" as to interrupt his companion's dark and tedious mood. Kristoff sighed again and pulled his hat down over his ears. Then he stepped onto the bench and gathered the reins.

"OK, Sven," he conceded, spurring his friend into a trot. "We're going, we're going."

Sven cast a shrewd glance over his shoulder and snorted, his breath forming brief plumes of humidity in the chill air.

Kristoff slouched in his seat. "Don't look at me like that."

* * *

**So, I'm a slow pacer. There's a lot of contemplative stuff going on in this story. Also, I've avoided writing much Kristoff in the past, and I kind of felt the need to give him more of a voice, here. **

**Please review, if you'd be so kind. As others have said before me, it means a lot.  
**


	4. Chapter 4

**QUICK NOTES:**

**Scholar of Justice brought something up in a review (**_**huzzah!**_**) that might require clarification for other readers. It has to do with Kristoff assuming that the princess would **_**have**_** to marry someone of royal or aristocratic lineage. Here's what I shared with Scholar of Justice, who was very gracious. I don't claim to make sense. Making sense is not particularly one of my strong points:**

_My thinking was that, while Elsa could very well do whatever she wants in terms of handling her sister's future, _Kristoff_ wouldn't know that. Since the chapter is told pretty much from his perspective, and since Kristoff is a broody type who's disinclined to get his hopes up, the idea of Anna being made to marry in this way is not outside the realm of possibility. At least, in his mind._

**So while I, the writer—and probably you all, the readers—know that Elsa will likely be a progressive ruler and will put the needs of her sister above those of propriety or convention, Kristoff doesn't.**

**Anyhoo. I like this upcoming chapter for some reason. Hope you do, too.**

**Arendelle and its peeps aren't mine.**

* * *

**Chapter 4**

Elsa could pinpoint the exact moment her sister found out about the queen's latest order, because the rare stillness of morning was interrupted by a sudden—and _most_ unladylike—cry of rage. Sighing, she seated herself to wait before the cold fireplace in her personal quarters. Pale sunlight filtered in through the windows. Outside, the sky held blue and clear in spite of the travesty below.

The village itself was quiet—awfully, eerily quiet. Elsa had spent a fair portion of each day visiting the afflicted and their unfortunate families. She'd seen firsthand the suffering that this fever caused, and though she vowed never to abandon her kingdom for the sake of her own skin, she couldn't help but act selfishly when it came to that of her sister.

As if on cue, Anna burst through the door without knocking. Elsa winced and braced herself for the onslaught.

"_What_," demanded the princess, "can you _possibly_ be _thinking_?"

"Anna—"

"This is a mistake, right?" she continued, without waiting for a response. "Obviously some sort of, I don't know, _miscommunication_?"

"Will you just—"

"Because there is no way—_no way_—my sister would close the castle gates again. Not at a time like this. Not _ever_."

Anna's cheeks burned. Her hair escaped in feral threads from its two poorly woven braids, and she appeared to be wearing only one shoe. The other was clutched in her right hand, and this she waved haphazardly as she spoke. Elsa flinched.

"Anna," she began, but then paused. What could she say? What could she _possibly_ say to make things better? How could she ever make this right?

The answer was obvious: _she couldn't_.

They stared at each other, Elsa hiding her frigid hands in the folds of her dress, Anna breathing heavily into the descending chill of the room.

"You don't understand."

Anna narrowed her eyes. "Try me."

"I'm only trying to protect you—"

"I've heard that before."

"But—"

"Just ... _stop it_, Elsa. You don't have to protect me!"

"I don't want you to get sick."

"What about _you_?"

Elsa frowned. "What do you mean?"

"You're leaving."

"What?"

Anna gestured with the shoe. "You're going into the city."

"I'm their queen, Anna. It's my duty to see our people through this."

"And if _you_ get sick?"

Elsa looked at her meaningfully, but the princess merely glared back at her.

"If I get sick," she sighed, "then my sister will replace me as queen."

For a moment, Anna did not respond. Then her chest began to heave. Hot tears collected in her eyes, and she looked for all the world like the lonely five-year-old she'd once been.

"No … _way_," she said forcefully. "No. Just … _no_."

"Anna—"

"I'm not even … I can't." Anna paced agitatedly. She grasped her unfortunate shoe in both hands and wrung it between them.

Elsa tried to placate her. "Don't worry about me."

The princess scoffed.

"_Look_," Elsa insisted. She thrust her hands out in front of her sister, forcing her to see the pale blue pallor in her fingertips, the veins of translucent ice coursing just beneath the skin. "No fever can hurt me. Do you understand?"

Anna faltered, at last, lurching to a standstill. Her eyes grew wide. She looked at Elsa in wonderment. Even after all this time—after all they had been through—she was still in awe of the queen's inexplicable power.

Elsa waited for her to respond; when she did not, she continued speaking.

"I've been among them for days, Anna—_weeks_. You can't imagine what it's like …" She trailed off, haunted by the faces of the those they'd lost. She'd held their clammy hands and spoken to them gently, tried to comfort them in their time of need. But nothing she did could save them, in the end. She was a formidable sovereign—a _queen_—but she was powerless to stop her people from dying.

Anna studied her anxiously but remained silent. The fire within her had been extinguished as easily as it had been ignited.

"I need you to stay inside the castle walls," Elsa concluded.

Slowly, resignedly, the princess nodded. She was about to concede. She was ready to accept Elsa's word as the unequivocal command that it was, no matter how much it chafed her to do so. But then she remembered, and her chest constricted, and she gasped as though the queen's chamber had suddenly become a vacuum. The closing of the gates had incensed her—had distracted her from the purpose of her daily vigil. It came back to her now, the waiting and the waiting and the _months_ of waiting, and she raised a hand to her heart and looked wildly at her sister.

"Elsa, no," she breathed.

Elsa frowned. "What?"

"You can't do this. You can't close the gates!"

"What are you talking about?"

"_Kristoff_—" Anna cried. "He's not back yet!"

Elsa felt her heart sink. A current of frigid air came down through the space between them. Ice began to creep along the floor from beneath her slippers.

"Anna, I—" Her voice faltered. "I don't have a choice."

Anna shook her head and produced a strangled sound from the back of her throat. Her chin trembled.

The queen swallowed hard. "I can't reopen the gates for one man." She could feel the frost twining between her fingers. _Not now_, _not now_, she thought desperately. She had to control it.

"But it's _Kristoff_," Anna whispered.

Elsa said nothing. What could she do? Kristoff would have been exposed to the fever by the time he'd made it through the city. There was always the chance that he could come through unharmed, as a small minority of villagers had, but was that a risk the queen was willing to take?

"Anna, _please_," she said plaintively, but her sister was already out the door.

* * *

**I like the idea of keeping Anna and Kristoff apart because it gives them a chance to interact with other characters more thoroughly … Including Elsa, whose head I've really started to like getting into.**

**Anyway. The good news is that I've got this puppy written through Chapter 9, and I've gotten a start on Chapter 10. The bad news is that I have … Hit. A. Wall.**

**Plus, life.**


	5. Chapter 5

**QUICK NOTES:**

**Chapter edited for development. Added a bit of context from the story that precedes this one, since I'm following my own canon at this point.**

**Arendelle and its peeps aren't mine.**

* * *

**Chapter 5**

All Kristoff wanted to do, after several days' ride down the mountain, was unload the last of his haul at the castle, settle his reindeer in at the stables, and collapse on the narrow bed in his apartment above them. A small part of him wanted to seek out the princess, as well, but he dismissed that idea before it had the chance to take hold. As if she'd want to have anything to do with him this soon after his arrival—he was ragged and disheveled, and he smelled overwhelmingly like Sven.

No, he needed a bath. And a haircut. And maybe some dinner ... And sleep. Lots and lots of sleep.

Which is probably why he was incapable of comprehending the simple fact that the castle gates were closed. He'd passed through the service entrance without incident, ignored Sven's hopeful glance toward the stables, and pulled up outside the gate with the sole purpose of delivering his ice and leaving at once. If he'd been any less weary, he might have noticed that the streets of Arendelle were empty. He might have observed the city's uncharacteristic stillness. And he might have looked upon the shuttered castle with suspicion. But he did none of these things, because he was cold and tired. And because seeing the castle in all its magnificence reminded him that he did not belong there. And because he was desperate to see Anna again ... But mostly because he had nothing of magnificence to offer her. Unless you counted Sven.

There was no denying that Sven was a magnificent beast.

These muddled thoughts competed with the palace guard for poor Kristoff's attention, and it was all he could do to stare incredulously at the man who refused to let him pass.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Bjorgman, but neither man nor merchandise is permitted to enter this castle."

"But—" Kristoff scrubbed a hand through his hair. "What am I supposed to do with all this ice?"

The soldier shrugged apologetically and suggested he unload it into the harbor.

Kristoff stared. He lowered his chin and leveled his eyebrows, and when he spoke his voice had assumed the rather less-than-friendly tone he'd been accustomed to using all his life before having met Anna. It wasn't a conscious thing, really. Just a reflex.

"_I beg your pardon_?" he grumbled.

The soldier—hardly more than a boy—took a step backward and staggered as his heel met the wall behind him. You could tell a lot about a person by the way he treated ice, and the mountain man was clearly not impressed.

"Uh, s-sorry?" stammered the boy. "It's just that we can't … um, we can't accept anything that might … that might be …" He swallowed nervously, "contaminated."

"_Contaminated_?"

The soldier nodded helplessly. "The fever, sir. Surely you're aware—"

"My ice is not contaminated."

"Certainly not, Mr. Bjorgman, but until this infection runs its course—"

Kristoff shook his head. "Wait," he said wearily. "What infection? Why are the castle gates closed?" He looked up at the fastened window casements. "Where is the queen?"

The soldier shifted his feet and peered at him with a regretful expression. Then he explained what had been happening to the city in Kristoff's absence. The latter listened with increasing dread. He brought his hands to his head, closed his eyes, took a deep breath.

"Are they all right in there?" he asked quietly, his voice tight with restraint.

Because in spite of appearances, Kristoff was a sensitive man who did care deeply for others. It was for this reason that he'd rescued Sven and halved all his meager provisions for him when he'd found the young reindeer left to the mercy of the elements so many years ago. And it was for this reason, also, that he'd allowed himself to get involved with the royal sisters in the first place. Of course, he'd stood to benefit from bringing summer back to the kingdom, in those days, but after being menaced by a pack of wolves and a giant snow creature he couldn't really be blamed for concluding that Anna was more trouble than any of this was worth.

But then he'd gone and pretty much _thrown_ himself into an avalanche for her—sent her away with the only thing in the whole world he'd ever held dear (which was Sven). And now his thoughts were fixated on that same troublesome, exasperating, gravely significant individual.

_Anna_.

"Yes, sir," replied the guardsman, now. "They are unaffected by the outbreak."

Kristoff nodded. It was clear to him why the gates had been closed to all outside influences. The best thing he could do for Anna—and for her sister—would be to stay away from them. And so he steered Sven back toward the stables, where they could warm up and rest and discuss what to do next.

"Please tell the queen—" he began, but then hesitated. Tell her what, exactly? That he'd made it back? What difference would _that_ make? Elsa had far more pressing concerns than whether or not her official ice deliverer was on the premises. He sighed.

"Never mind."

If only he could see Anna—just to assure himself that she was safe. He didn't know much about ailments such as these, how they could endanger a whole population in a relatively small amount of time. Ask him how to set a broken bone, or to prevent a hypothermic stupor, or to treat diseases that were endemic to reindeer, and he was your man. But he'd never really spent much time in human society, and so he had little understanding of how an epidemic could spread like wildfire through a village—a city—like Arendelle.

He did know one thing for certain, though: his ice was as pure as the rarefied mountain air, and he'd sooner die of dehydration than waste it in favor of the stale, copper-tinged stuff the people of Arendelle used for their daily needs. So he settled Sven in to his stall at the royal stable with a generous pile of carrots, and then he channeled all his frustration and all his anxiety into the laborious task of unloading each block of ice into barrels. These he stored in a well-swept corner near the cast-iron stove below his loft. Finally, he located a large pot, stoked up a good flame in the belly of the stove, and set a sizable quantity of ice to boil. Later he would portion out enough warm water to bathe in. The rest he would store away to cool, and this he would use for Sven and himself as drinking water.

It tasted nothing like the city; it tasted like home.

* * *

**Sort of a quiet chapter, but it lays the groundwork for … later developments. I'm sure you can guess …**

**As for offering a realistic portrayal of how society falls apart during a plague—particularly before and during the nineteenth century—yeah. I'm not doing it justice by keeping things confined to the castle grounds. But my reasoning, aside from the fact that I don't have time for adequate research and such, is sort of twofold: 1) the source material is Disney, and 2) well, it's a world with magic. It will never be entirely realistic. So.  
**

**I'll probably go back and add more context in the future. **


	6. Chapter 6

**QUICK NOTES:**

**I LOVED writing this chapter. If I ever bothered to title my installments, this one would be called "The Further (Platonic) Adventures of Elsa and Kristoff."**

**The evolving friendship between these two is just really fun to explore, especially because its starting point is so painfully awkward.**

**A note on Elsa's sexuality: I could not **_**possibly**_** be less interested in whether she's gay or straight. And here's why—it has no relevancy in the film. So you are welcome to read my Elsa as one or the other, or neither, or both, as long as you don't pair her up with Kristoff. Because Anna and Kristoff 4 evah. **

**Arendelle and its peeps aren't mine.**

* * *

**Chapter 6**

Elsa continued to minister to her people as best she could in the weeks that followed, and since her relationship with Anna had been strained by their argument, it was not difficult to avoid contact with her. For while the queen was safe from the effects of the fever, she couldn't know whether her proximity to the sick and dying would make her a danger to those who had so far retained their good health. Which meant that Elsa, once again, must isolate herself from the rest of the castle.

No matter how hard she tried to shelter the princess, however, she could not prevent the inevitable from happening—and so the pestilence breached all of the castle's defenses in the end, and even the staff was no longer safe. It began with a servant girl named Sarah, whose job it was to wash and rinse the royal plates and cutlery. She'd been a stout and cheerful sort, and though neither the queen nor the princess had known her, they both wept bitterly—in their separate rooms, alone—when she succumbed, at last, to the terrible fever.

Anna would have been lying if she'd said she was not afraid, but she was also greatly preoccupied by the fact that Kristoff remained beyond her reach. She knew he'd made it safely down the mountain and that he and Sven had returned to the stables—but for how long she was uncertain. She could hardly blame him if he chose to leave, after all. He must be idling there, his usual duties made unnecessary by this wicked plague, and _oh_, how he must _hate_ it! She understood him well enough to know that he craved movement—couldn't tolerate being in one place for too long—and that he preferred the wilderness beyond the city walls to Arendelle itself.

It did not occur to her that he had other reasons for staying.

She found, to her utter amazement, that she worried as much for him as she did for herself—if not more so—and this was a strange and bittersweet realization. So Anna paced the floor of her bedroom and wrung her hands and felt her insides twist with the fear that he, too, might fall ill.

And she began to scheme.

Still, it was Elsa who found him first—though it wasn't like he was _hiding_. He'd been brushing the grit out of Sven's coat one morning after they'd returned, and the queen overheard him "discussing" his options with the reindeer as she approached.

_You can't just leave her_. This, apparently, was Sven.

"What choice do I have?" retorted his companion. "There's no work for us here. And, anyway, they won't let _anyone_ in the palace."

_You miss her_.

"I don't," said Kristoff sharply, but then his voice softened. "They're right, though, aren't they? I could make her sick."

_But you're fine. You don't have this fever_.

Kristoff didn't say anything.

_You're not sick_, insisted Sven.

And then Kristoff answered in a voice that was so quiet, Elsa almost didn't hear him—but she did, if only just, and it nearly broke her heart.

"How can I be so sure?"

At this point, Elsa's horse caught sight of her lurking in the stable door and nickered in greeting. Startled, Kristoff raised his head and knocked it hard against Sven's left antler.

"_Ow_!" he yelped, stumbling backwards and colliding with an empty bucket. It upended as he fell back into a pile of hay.

Sven sighed.

"Oh!" cried Elsa. "Sorry! I'm sorry. I just ... I came for Knut …

Kristoff flushed. "You don't have anything to be sorry for," he muttered. "You just ... caught me by surprise, that's all." He rubbed his head where it had bumped up against Sven, but then seemed to remember himself. Embarrassed, he scrambled to his feet and stood before the queen, his hair littered with hay stalks and stable dust. "Your, uh, Majesty."

Equally flustered, Elsa gave a dismissive wave of her hand.

"Please, Kristoff. We've been through this. It's _Elsa_."

He nodded, and they were quiet for a moment. They _had_ been through this—through it and through it, until he'd finally been comfortable enough to take her at her word and dispense with the pleasantries. Not that she'd found it any easier to loosen up around him, in those days. She _had_ almost killed him, after all ... Well, she hadn't _tried_ to kill him—it wasn't _on purpose_.

It was an accident.

And he was so nice about it, just kind of wanted to forget that it ever happened. She was grateful to him, for that.

Last winter, they'd finally started to warm up to each other and get past their mutual embarrassment—him for his total lack of refinement, her for having locked the kingdom under a punishing layer of ice. It had even occurred to Elsa how much they'd had in common with each other: they both grew up pretty much on their own, they both preferred the company of, well, _no one_, and they both kind of had a thing for ice.

She liked him. She was glad that, in spite of all the terrible things that had happened that cold, cold summer, Anna and Kristoff had found each other.

Now Elsa glanced at him and couldn't help but smirk a little.

"You've got straw in your ..." she gestured vaguely at his head.

He reached up and turned a more violent shade of pink.

"Yeah, well … whose fault is that, _Your Majesty_?" He brushed off his sleeves and attempted to ruffle the chaff out of his hair. Then he grinned a little, and Elsa found herself smiling back.

"It's good to see you, Kristoff."

He said the same, and it looked like he genuinely meant it. Sven gave her hip an affectionate nuzzle, and she reached out and stroked his tender nose. They fell silent, each acutely aware of all that needed to be said between them—and neither knowing quite how to say it. Then Kristoff shook himself a little and moved to ready the queen's horse.

"Sorry," he murmured.

"Don't apologize."

He slipped the bridle gently under Knut's chin and adjusted the headstall around his ears. Elsa watched him quietly. He had an easy way with the animals, moving around their breadth with an almost graceful self-assurance. It was funny, in a way—so contrary to the way he comported himself around people.

Or maybe it was just _her_ people.

"Are you going out on your own?" he asked, breaking into her thoughts.

She nodded.

"You're not worried, then? About ..." he trailed off.

Elsa gave him an appreciative smile. "A fever can't hurt me," she replied.

Kristoff tightened the horse's girth straps. "I still don't think you should go alone," he said casually. Cautiously.

"I'll be all right."

"You're the queen."

She shrugged. "You see many ruffians out on the streets these days?"

He scoffed amiably but ignored the question. "I'll go with you," he said.

"No."

"You can't stop me."

"Actually, I can."

"Not really," he said mildly. "I'll just follow you."

"To keep an eye on me?"

"Maybe."

"I'm the queen."

"So?"

"So I'm sort of the boss of you."

Kristoff laughed. "What are you going to do, throw me in prison?"

Elsa sighed. "Why are you doing this?"

He looked at her, confused. She was the sovereign leader of Arendelle, Anna's sister, and more importantly, a rare and actual friend. Why _wouldn't_ he do this?

"Aren't you afraid of catching this ... this fever?" she demanded.

It was his turn to shrug. "I probably already have, by now." He turned his attention to Sven, who was rather disinclined to leave the warmth of his stall.

Elsa frowned. "You should be upset with me," she said.

"What on earth for?"

"Closing the gates. Not letting you see Anna."

Kristoff went still, his back to her.

"You did the right thing, Elsa," he said, without looking around. He palmed a bit of apple for Sven as a conciliatory gesture, and the reindeer finally consented to move. "You're just trying to keep her safe."

"She doesn't see it that way."

"Would you, in her place?" he asked, and it was a fair question. But then he _did_ look up, and he met her eyes with an expression of such seriousness that it took her aback. Elsa was not accustomed to catching her ice master in such a mood—he wasn't much for displaying emotion, this one.

"Tell me she's OK," he said now. "I need to know."

His face was pale with worry, his eyes unnaturally bright. Elsa wanted to reach out and touch his forehead, make sure he wasn't too warm, but she didn't dare.

"Anna's fine," she assured him gently. It was true, for the most part. There was no point in elaborating. What good would it do, to tell him that the palace was no longer a failsafe against this cursed infection? It would only cause him greater anxiety, and for a thing over which he had no control. Better to leave him in ignorance.

They regarded each other for a beat; then Kristoff nodded curtly. The moment had passed. Once again, she was restrained and he was inscrutable; all was as it should be.

But then he offered her a hand up into the saddle, and he smiled just a little. And for the first time in what felt like forever, Elsa was comforted.


	7. Chapter 7

**QUICK NOTES:**

**Edited to develop more of Anna's antics in the first months of knowing Kristoff.**

**Arendelle and its peeps aren't mine.**

* * *

**Chapter 7**

"_Trust_ me, Olaf."

Anna knelt before the snowman and clasped her hands together earnestly. He wasn't in the habit of distrusting anyone—_ever_—except for maybe that one time, long ago, when Kristoff took the princess to meet his family. How was he to know they were trolls? At first glance, they'd resembled nothing more than rocks. Perfectly spherical, demurely moss-covered rocks, sure—but rocks nonetheless …

Anyway. Circumstances were different now. Anna was gazing at him with a sort of fervor that bypassed mischievous and went straight to foolhardy. Her eyes burned. Her cheeks blushed a ruddy pink.

It was a bad idea. Even Olaf could see that.

"I don't know …" he said slowly, trying to buy himself some time. He needed to bolster his resolve—he really did—because Anna knew his weaknesses.

"When was the last time you saw them?" she wheedled. "You haven't had a hug from Kristoff in _months_!"

He didn't bother to point out that Kristoff wasn't the hugging type. Still, the mountain man did have a way of showing affection, and Olaf … just … couldn't … _resist_ affection. Of any kind.

He pursed his lips, made feeble sounds of resistance, would have bitten his tongue if he'd had one.

"_Olaf_ …"

He pulled down on the two out three twigs he had for hair.

"_Oooooolaf_," she crooned.

And then—

"All right!" he cried, throwing his arms out in surrender. "I'll do it, I'll do it."

Anna squealed and kissed the top of his head. He felt a slight warmth where her lips touched his snow, and all thoughts of refusing her fled his tiny golem brain—though one practical question remained …

"What, exactly, am I doing?"

"Helping me get past the guardsmen."

"OK," he replied, nodding. As though this made perfect sense. "And how?"

Anna leaned in conspiratorially. "I need you to create," she said, "a diversion."

The snowman was rapt. "A _diversion_."

"Yes!"

He felt himself getting swept up in her excitement. It radiated off her skin like heat.

But ...

"How do I do that?"

There was a pause.

"I haven't quite figured that out, yet," she answered truthfully.

Anna slid off her bed and drifted around the room, absently braiding and re-braiding her hair as she paced. It would take a few days, she assumed, to come up with a plan that might actually _work_. Because if the princess of Arendelle knew one thing, it was that it was _not_ easy to sneak out of the castle—or into it—when Queen Elsa set her mind to confining her sister for her own good.

She'd learned this firsthand on her sixteenth birthday, when she'd clambered out of her window at night and attempted to descend a climbing hydrangea to the courtyard below. That had resulted in a twisted ankle, for her, and a sweeping removal of all aerially rooted plants from the walls of the palace, for the staff.

Even then, though, her sister had not come out of her chambers—at least, not while Anna was about.

There was also the time, just a year ago, when she'd waited for the inevitable hush of a slumbering household to descend upon the castle before traipsing out its front gate to visit Kristoff and Sven. She hadn't intended to do anything _untoward_—the thought made her cringe. She simply couldn't sleep and thought a stroll in the wee hours of a warm autumn night would ease her wakeful mood.

Of course, it was late and the stable door had been locked. And both Sven and Kristoff had been asleep, so she'd had to wake them up as discretely as possible by throwing bits of rubble at the loft window. And this had struck her as quite hilarious—a sort of reversal of the balcony scene and all that—though Kristoff had failed to see the humor in it. He'd been grumpy and disheveled and apprehensive about being discovered _with the princess_ at such an inappropriate and _ungodly_ hour of the night. So he'd come down from his apartments and marched her straight back to the castle.

Somehow, she'd managed to twist her ankle on that occasion, as well—which, Kristoff was quick to point out, was her fault _entirely_. They'd come up with a suitable explanation for it, at the time, and no one was the wiser.

Kristoff hadn't been familiar with the balcony scene, anyway …

Now the princess sighed and paced and chewed her fingernails. And tried to think of a way past the soldiers that were stationed at each and every door in the palace.

She felt a little punch-drunk, to tell the truth. But she hadn't gotten to tag around with Kristoff in, like, _forever_. And, yeah, she had some friendly acquaintances here in the village, but she didn't really have _friends_. Not like Kristoff.

Everything in the castle was so grim and sorrowful and scary. She wasn't attenuating the seriousness of their plight—but she _had_ to get away from it, at least for a moment. And she needed someone to talk to, someone who could mitigate her fears, make her feel that maybe, _maybe_ things would come out all right. Her sister was unavailable—she'd made that clear enough—and really, deemphasizing their fears had never been Elsa's strong suit, had it?

So Anna was going to find a way out of the castle, and Olaf was going to help. He was staring at her now, following her movements with an expectant look on his face. She stopped in the middle of the room.

"Sorry, what?" she asked.

But he hadn't spoken, and now his expression began to change from one of collusion to one of doubt. Qualms scudded through his eyes like dark clouds across a shifting horizon.

_Oh no_, she thought. _No, no, no, no, no _…

"Olaf—"

The snowman sighed. "It's just that your sister will be so _mad_."

"But it's not like we're leaving the castle," she argued. "I mean, yeah, OK, we're leaving the castle. But we'll still be on the grounds. We'll be on the court side of the wall!"

"I don't like to upset people," Olaf fretted.

"Olaf, please!" she begged, wringing her hands. She looked at him with such sadness in her eyes, and her words came out in a sort of guttural-piteous-keening wail. And then, in barely a whisper: "_Please_."

Even a preternaturally happy snowman could tell that she was sincere. True, Anna had been gifted with certain powers of persuasion that rivaled the strength of even her sister's magic. And while she was never _malicious_ about it, she was also not above using this "power" to get what she wanted. It worked on everyone except the queen. Kai and Gerda, for example, were completely in her thrall—as was the rest of the staff. Sven, that dearest of reindeer, did her bidding without question. Kristoff, who was smart enough to know he was being manipulated, gave in to her out of pure laziness. And Olaf, who was made only of tenderness and snow, and who was as artless as Anna was art_ful_ … Well, Olaf was the worst of them all.

But this time was different.

He was right, too. The snowman may have had certain _overdeveloped_ sensibilities, but Anna wasn't trying to exploit them—at least, not anymore. She simply looked at him with the same raw and desperate hope that was, at that very moment, flooding through her heart. To Olaf, it was plain as day: the princess needed her reindeer king. And Olaf could also see—even if she could not—that the intensity of feeling within her was nothing less than pure, unadulterated … love.


	8. Chapter 8

**QUICK NOTES:**

**This story, you guys. It just doesn't want to get written. I'll be slowing down pretty soon. Again, because … life.**

**Arendelle and its peeps aren't mine.**

* * *

**Chapter 8**

Several weeks had passed since Kristoff and Sven came down from the mountain, and though they accompanied the queen _every day_ into the homes of the afflicted, neither showed any signs of having contracted the illness themselves. They were relieved, of course—incredibly so—but this turn of events also left them quite perplexed.

How, exactly, was it possible for Kristoff to avoid the contagion for so long—and after having exposed himself to it _so damn frequently_? If they could just answer these questions, thought Elsa, they might be able to save Arendelle before too many more lives were lost.

A substantial piece of the puzzle, it turned out, would be brought to light by none other than Kristoff himself. This was as much a surprise to him as it would have been for those of a more noble birth and auspicious patronage, and the queen would later relish the chance to rub it into the faces of certain naysayers within her own council. Arendelle's official ice master and deliverer was not good enough for the princess? Really, now?

But that was a whole different thing.

The puzzle piece in question fell into place on a day like so many before it—one in which the queen and her one-man escort were visiting those poor folk who had been stricken with the disease. And when the ice deliverer made his discovery, it just so happened that they were in the home of a certain seamstress with a husband, a dog, and seven spirited children to take care of.

Unfortunately, only four of those children were showing much spirit at the moment.

"Robert has gone to work in the settlements," explained the woman, "to help make ends meet. I will not allow him to come home. If he were to fall ill ..."

She did not finish the thought. She didn't have to: the family needed his income, and they needed it desperately. Should something happen to their father, the children might become destitute before the fever really took hold. And were that to happen, their chances of survival would be next to nothing.

"No one needs a seamstress these days," Freya concluded. She wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand and concentrated on smoothing the folds of her apron. When she looked up again, her features were composed.

Kristoff admired her stoicism. She was a strong woman, and generous to a fault in spite of how little she had. At the moment, he was seated awkwardly in a chair that Robert must have cobbled together for the children. There wasn't much in the way of furniture in this modest home, though Kristoff didn't mind—because Kristoff hadn't grown up with any furniture _at all_. Still, it made for a funny contrast. He was a solid man, to be sure, but what most people overlooked (because he tended to slouch) was that he was also _long_. Really long. So long, in fact, that his knees poked up ridiculously when he sat in the child-sized chair by the hearth.

Freya's brood was relentlessly amused by this, and by Kristoff in general. They alighted on random household items—an overturned bucket, an inveterate rocking horse, the edge of a box of kindling—and stared at him in the way that children do. He found it intensely unnerving.

"Are you a doctor?" they demanded.

Kristoff was alarmed. Were they speaking to _him_? He had about as much experience with children as he did with adults, which was to say practically none.

"_Me_? No."

"Why not?"

"I'm just ... I'm an ice harvester."

They regarded him skeptically. "So?"

His eyes widened. Were they being serious?

"So ... I'm not smart enough to be a doctor," he replied. _Duh_. "I just sell ice."

They continued to stare. He stole a glance at Elsa and their mother, who were deep in conversation. The queen's brows were drawn tight, her lips turned down at the corners. Her eyes seemed fluid in the dim light of the kitchen, and he could see that their discourse pained her deeply.

For a moment, he was overcome by a sense of admiration and awe. How much control she must be exerting, to keep her powers in check. Not a single thread of frost escaped her fingers ...

"Are you in love with the princess?"

The question was so unexpected, so abruptly delivered—so _wrong_—that Kristoff actually choked on his own breath. He spluttered and coughed and embarrassed himself even further, if that was possible, until Freya appeared at his side with a cup of water.

"_Out_!" she said firmly, glaring daggers at the children. "All of you!" And they scattered like dandelion seeds in a fractious wind.

"I am _so sorry_, Mister Bjorgman," she lamented, studying him attentively. "Are you all right, sir?"

Kristoff nodded and accepted the water gratefully. He'd swallowed over half before becoming aware of that stale, vaguely metallic taste of city life hitting the back of his throat. It was dull and flat and lukewarm—nothing like the pure springs from which he was accustomed to drinking, where the snowmelt came down in aerated trills of such bracing clarity that it made him feel alive just to sip from his cupped hands ...

_Oh_.

"... bunch of jackanapes, the _lot_ of them!" Freya ranted. But Kristoff wasn't listening.

His eyes sought Elsa's, and she frowned when she caught the expression on his face.

"What is it?" she asked. The seamstress stammered to a halt and blinked at them both.

"Elsa—" he began, but then hesitated.

"_What_?" she repeated, her voice escalating a bit. Why was he acting so strangely? "For God's sake, Kristoff. Just tell me what's wrong."

His eyes were distant, now, as though he was lost in thought. Which, in fact, he was.

"Nothing," he murmured. "Nothing's wrong ... I mean, I'm fine. But I think," He paused. "... I think maybe I'm going to be sick."

Freya blanched. She reached for the overturned bucket, but Kristoff waved her off.

"Not now," he said pensively. "Not yet."

Elsa was on her feet. She watched him with a wild expression in her eyes, and an arctic wind seemed to burst in through the door.

"What do you mean?" she asked. "What are you even talking about? When?"

Kristoff rose to his full height and gently placed the cup on the table between them.

"Soon."


	9. Chapter 9

**QUICK NOTES:**

**Thank you to those who have reviewed!**

**Arendelle and its peeps aren't mine.**

* * *

**Chapter 9**

The princess was frustrated. All of her efforts to slip past the castle guardsmen and out into the open air had been hindered by poor timing, misplaced footholds, and overloud associates of the snowy persuasion. Really, she had rotten luck.

Little news reached her from the outside world these days. She had been told that the city was in crisis, that Elsa—who was apparently immune to the heat of the fever—spent her every waking moment amongst the people or shut away with men who were educated in such matters, and that a number of staff and even some members of the Queen's council had shown signs of infection. Now Anna was limited to her quarters, where she counted her steps and alternately seethed at and longed for her sister. She was in a prison, both literally and metaphorically, and all she could do to while away the hours of her solitary confinement was worry, and worry, and worry.

At least she had Olaf.

"I can't stand this any longer," she declared, to no one in particular. She was lying upside-down on her bed in a woeful sort of delirium.

The snowman nodded sagely.

"You're lying down," he returned. "Smart thinking."

Anna clutched a fistful of hair and began splitting its ragged ends. Over a month had passed since Elsa first closed the palace gates. _A month_! And now Anna had been _ordered_ to stay in her room, and she found herself driven to distraction by dread and boredom and loneliness. She'd lost count of the days. Her little scheme to find Kristoff had been a welcome diversion, true, but she and the snowman had been thwarted at every turn. So she merely sprawled about the room, lethargic and despondent, and thought about all the people for whom she was afraid. And whom she missed.

Sometimes she practiced mountaineering knots with the decorative tassels she'd pulled down from her window dressing.

She thought a lot about Kristoff.

Like, he had really long fingers, for example. Not the slender, tapered fingers of an aristocrat; Kristoff had working man's hands, for sure. But he also had these long fingers that would have given him an enviable reach on the grand piano in the palace ballroom—if he'd known at all how to play.

Which he didn't.

Most of the people she'd been introduced to in "polite" society were able to do things like play the piano, or lob a tennis ball, or perfect the habit of drinking without becoming indiscreetly drunk.

To amuse herself, Anna started imagining her rustic friend in all sorts of contradictory venues. Kristoff, holding a fragile porcelain teacup in those broad, long-fingered hands. Kristoff, engaging in a pretentious conversation about social welfare. Kristoff, admiring—_admiring_!—a topiary in the palace gardens … She snorted. The first time she'd gone for a walk with him in those gardens, he'd stopped dead in his tracks at the sight of one.

"What's that?" he'd asked.

"What?"

"_That_."

Anna had followed his gaze toward a dense bay laurel that was cultivated to resemble some sort of fanciful scepter. Or … something.

"It's a tree."

Kristoff had looked appalled. "That is not a tree."

"Sure it is."

"No, it's not."

She'd sighed and crossed her arms and turned to him exasperatedly.

"Fine," she'd retorted. "It's a shrubbery."

"A shrubbery?"

"Yes"

"What's a shrubbery?"

"It's this!" she'd cried, gesturing wildly at the topiary. "This is a shrubbery. Designed by a master shrubber, I'm sure."

He'd just stared at her blankly until she sighed.

"A shrubbery is, well, it's a kind of tree."

"Trees don't grow like that."

"Well, no," she'd allowed. "They trim them to look like that."

"Who?"

"Who what?"

"Who trims them to look like that?"

"_Oh_!" She'd rolled her eyes to mask her confusion. "The gardeners, probably."

He'd fallen silent for a moment, studying the strange living sculpture.

"Don't you think it's kind of weird?"

"I don't know," she'd said, shrugging disinterestedly. "I guess?"

And he'd simply shaken his head. "You don't _design_ trees," he'd murmured, then leveled a final glance at the tree-topiary-shrubbery. "It's not supposed to _be_ like that."

Now, lying wrong-side-up on her bed, the princess scoffed loudly to the room at large—though she didn't expect Olaf to understand. The point was that each of these scenarios proved so ludicrous—so _wildly_ uncharacteristic of the mountain man she knew—that the thought of him entertaining _any_ such behavior made her laugh.

But her laughter was as much humorless as it was otherwise, because she was suddenly stricken with an uncomfortable thought: _What would court life do to Kristoff_?

Everything she appreciated about him had to do with the fact that he could never in a million years tolerate the kind of person she'd just imagined. The kind of person she'd been surrounded by—on a daily basis—during the long months of the harvest season. The months he'd left her behind in order to find work and solitude in the mountains.

"He must hate it here," she murmured.

"Maybe a little," agreed Olaf.

Anna hadn't expected a response, of course, and she sat up abruptly. Truth be told, she'd rather forgotten about him. And anyway—

"How did you know who I was talking about?"

The snowman, who'd inverted his head over a plush ottoman to view the world from her perspective, righted himself and peered at her as though it was obvious.

"Who else would it be?"

There was a pause. Anna released her grip on the split ends of her hair and proceeded to chew on them instead. She gazed pensively at the little creature.

"Kristoff," she clarified, asking the question without articulating it as such.

"Well, _yeah_," said Olaf.

"Why would you think—" Anna felt dizzy, probably from lying for so long upside-down. She should probably stop doing that. But— "Why would you assume I was talking about him?"

Olaf shrugged in the way that only an oddly-proportioned snow golem could.

"You don't really talk about anyone else, do you? Unless it's the queen, and I'm fairly certain Elsa's a _she_." He chortled at his own joke, then finished it unnecessarily. "Not a _he_."

The princess felt suddenly defensive.

"I talk about other people," she insisted. "Don't I?"

Olaf just looked at her; she hastened to change the subject.

"So he does, though," she murmured. "Hate it here?"

"_Hate_ is such a strong word ..." equivocated the snowman.

"Olaf—"

"Would you prefer that he loved it?" he countered, blinking at her guilelessly. "Would you rather Kristoff become just like all the other gentlemen at court?"

Though Olaf, being Olaf, had asked the question entirely without subtext, Anna couldn't help but recognize the wisdom of his words. In fact, she could see the point of them even if he couldn't. And the point was this: if Kristoff didn't _dislike_ the courtly life as much as he did, maybe Anna wouldn't be as ... attached ... to him as much as she was.

Was that right?

She shook her head in answer to Olaf's question. Kristoff wouldn't be _Kristoff_ if he were capable of admiring topiary. He wasn't supposed to _be_ like that.

And yet, Anna had pressured him to stay the winter in Arendelle a year ago, and he had done it. He'd been anxious, uncomfortable, out-of-place—but she had asked him, and he had done it.

_Why_?

"I should let him go," she said quietly. "I should let him go home. It's not fair ..."

She waited for Olaf to remind her that the ice master was a grown man. That he could leave whenever he chose. That Anna wasn't making him do anything he didn't want to do.

But the snowman said nothing.


	10. Chapter 10

**QUICK NOTES:**

**Thank you to those who have reviewed!**

**Arendelle and its peeps aren't mine.**

* * *

**Chapter 10**

Elsa drew her cloak more tightly around her shoulders—not because she felt the November chill but simply out of habit. As a child, and before her isolation, she'd observed this tendency in others and adopted their mannerisms in order to fit in. Or, at least, hide what she was. Now it had become an unconscious gesture, a nervous tick, something she did without thinking.

She never did fit in. Not then and not now.

Kristoff no longer accompanied her on her daily calls to the people of Arendelle. It wasn't a good idea, he'd remarked apologetically, since his exposure to the pathogen was pretty much a sure thing, at this point, and he'd only be a danger to the healthy few. Elsa was disappointed, but she knew he was right. It was just that, for a little while, she'd sort of fit in with _him_. He was as much of a loner as she, after all ... And then it had been them against the world—or rather, against this cursed epidemic.

Anyway. Unlike the rest of her acquaintance, Kristoff didn't have any practical expectations or ulterior motives in spending time with her. True, an audience with the queen was considered no small accomplishment amongst the various merchants and statesmen and representatives of the people. They respected her, adored her, _loved_ her even—but as a just and charitable sovereign, not as a person. Not as a young woman simply in need of a friend.

She had wasted no time in sharing Kristoff's theory with her council of state and staff of royal physicians. She'd sequestered herself for _hours_ with these men—as well as a small fleet of civil engineers—in order to determine how best to purge the city's water supply of its contagion. They had all nodded appreciatively, for they understood at once that the queen and her ice master were correct. In the meantime, all able-bodied physicians were summoned to the palace, where they were told to instruct the queen's guard on the necessity of boiling corrupted water in order to purify it. Then, with the help of these soldiers, they were dispatched on an information campaign that would hopefully buy the people of Arendelle some time.

It was the water. It had always been the water.

Which explained why Kristoff never got sick. He'd been absent for the start of the outbreak, when sailors from far away places had disembarked in the port district and mingled with the local populace. Somehow the contaminant had entered the city's water system, and while an aberrant few had managed to escape infection, the rest had contracted it through one of their most fundamental needs as human beings: thirst. They drank it because they had to. They bathed in it, cooked with it, and washed their linens in wooden tubs _filled_ with it. This combined with the intense _proximity_ of individuals within Arendelle, and the disease became pervasive and inescapable.

This burning fever that spread like a massive conflagration through her city …

And yet Kristoff had twice avoided the contagion—first by summering in the mountains, where the water was pristine and the press of human existence simply a nonissue; and second through his general distaste for the city supply. He'd been told to dispose of his ice harvest, and instead of complying he had allowed it to thaw and used it for himself. As far as he was concerned, it simply tasted better, reminded him of home at a time when he felt decidedly _not-at-home_.

It wasn't until he'd drunk from the local woman's cup that his own wellness was called into question. So he waited. And Elsa waited. And after three days had passed, he began to show signs of the fever.

"You're warm," she noted from her seat in his loft.

"Well," he said wryly, "relative to you, I suppose that's probably the case."

Elsa smiled without humor. He'd attempted to make light of the situation, and she tried to play along, but she was concerned. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, his hands braced on his knees and his head hanging in a way that suggested he felt queasy.

"How are you feeling?" she asked, though she dreaded the answer.

He brought his head up and sighed. Then he kneaded the heels of his hands into his eyes as though by doing so he could make them see better.

"Not so good," he admitted. What was the point of lying? He didn't have anything to prove—certainly not to Elsa, who'd nearly frozen his heart once …

It was the thing they didn't talk about. None of them. Not even Anna, though she'd tried once, not long after the _incident_ with Hans, when she and her sister had invited Kristoff to the palace for dinner. He'd been uncomfortable, Elsa had been uncomfortable, and Anna had tried to lift _both_ their moods by addressing the whole sorry issue head on.

It hadn't gone too badly, actually, until she'd come to the part about Elsa turning her new pal into a "Kris-_toff_sicle." Then things had gone south pretty quickly. Kristoff had actually choked on his soup (something he seemed to do quite frequently, given his display at Freya's house). The queen had frozen their entire table setting, and Anna had nearly burst into tears for having, once again, ruined a good thing by putting her foot in her mouth.

She'd _nearly_ burst into tears, but she hadn't. Anna was made of stronger stuff than that.

Now, facing each other in the apartment above the stables, it appeared that Kristoff's thoughts had taken a similar turn.

"What about Anna?" he asked. He'd asked pretty much the same question every day since coming down from the mountains, and Elsa had given him pretty much the same answer.

"She's all right, under the circumstances," she said, but her tone was compassionate.

She could see that he was distracted with worry—and while part of that distraction was likely an effect of the fever taking hold of him, Elsa knew it was more than that. Because Kristoff's agitation had been steeping just beneath the surface _long_ before he'd taken that fateful drink of water.

"I'm sorry, Kristoff," she added, her voice barely above a whisper. She looked at her cold, cold hands.

"Don't be," he said gently. "It's not your fault."

She studied him for a moment—scrutinized his features—and then frowned. He studied her back, watched her watching him, and didn't bother to tell her to quit it. Trying to glower down the queen was like trying to outstare a cat.

Not that he was _glowering_, of course. For one thing, she was the _queen_. And for another, you'd have to be angry to glower, and Kristoff simply wasn't angry.

Still, he _was_ the first to look away.

"Can you eat anything?"

He shook his head. Discouraged, Elsa stood to fetch him a cup of water from the ice melt he'd stored aside. He took it gratefully, but she noticed that he didn't really drink much.

"Are you worried?" she asked, then bit her lip regretfully. Had she said that _out loud_?

But he just brought a hand to the back of his neck and grimaced.

"Yeah."

She hesitated. "We'll figure something out."

"I know you will."

And he meant it. He had complete trust in her—she could see it in his weirdly dilated eyes. It made her nervous.


	11. Chapter 11

**QUICK NOTES:**

**Thank you to those who have reviewed! It ****makes my day****.**

**Skyfireflight16—Don't worry about Kristoff. I didn't intend to mess with him, though he did get kind of thrown under the bus for the sake of the plot. My plan was to mess with someone else, as you will see presently.**

**Arendelle and its peeps aren't mine.**

* * *

**Chapter 11**

Anna had it too, this implicit and unconditional sense of trust in her sister—even when she found herself possessed by a childish fit of temper, which was presently the case. This was unusual for her. When it came to wearing her heart on her sleeve, Anna was many things, but one thing she was _not_ was vindictive. Neither was she in the habit of holding on to resentment. But when Elsa knocked on the door to talk to her sister—really _talk_ to her—Anna had refused to open it.

"Anna, please. Open the door."

"No."

"We need to talk."

"I don't want to."

Elsa sighed. She ached for her sister. It hurt that Anna wanted to shut her out, now, in her anger and her frustration. But she also couldn't blame her. Anna would return to her when she was ready, because that's who Anna was.

Except the person fuming and simmering behind this door was not really acting like Anna …

"I'll just get Kai to unlock the door from the outside," she threatened blandly, all the while thinking _Control it, control it. Reign it in_. Her palms tingled.

There was a silence on the other side. Then the door burst open and Anna flew into her arms, weeping messily.

"No you can't," she cried. "You can't get Kai."

Elsa shut her eyes. She felt her body slump under the weight of her sister—and of what she implied.

"Kai's ill?" she whispered. Anna nodded into her shoulder.

Dazedly, she lifted a hand and stroked her sister's knotted hair. What must she have been through, during all this time alone—or very nearly alone? Anna had been locked down under a sort of reverse quarantine, isolated from the city and from her only friend. And from her sister, whom she needed most. The queen had made sure she'd had Olaf for company, and Gerda and Kai to keep her somewhat informed. But it wasn't enough. It was never enough, and Elsa _of all people_ understood this.

And now she no longer had Kai.

"Can I come in now?" she asked softly.

Anna pulled away and nodded again, sniffling moistly. She looked terrible, draped in her days-old nightgown and her hair an unbrushed morass of tangles. Her eyes were red-rimmed and inflamed, her cheeks pink.

Elsa frowned.

"Are you all right?"

"What?" Anna wiped her nose with the back of her wrist and led the queen into her room. "Yes. Just a little, you know, _crazy_."

Elsa wasn't so sure.

"Let me feel your forehead."

"Don't be ridiculous."

"Anna—"

"I'm _fine_."

"I don't think you are."

She reached for her sister, but Anna deflected her hands. For a moment, they swatted at each other like bickering children, but then Elsa prevailed and swept her fingers briefly beneath Anna's fringe. What she felt sent her into a panic.

"You're burning up."

"I just haven't had any fresh air," came the accusatory reply. "In, like, _ages._"

Elsa ignored her. Instead, she grasped Anna fiercely by the wrist and pulled her toward the bed.

"_Ow_! _Stoppit_, Elsa. You're hurting me!"

But Elsa did not stop. She pressed her sister onto the bed and turned to rummage through her drawers for a clean nightgown. Finding one, she tossed it at Anna and then began to pace—just as her sister had done, and in this very room, before her.

Kristoff, Kai, Anna … Anna, Kristoff, Kai … and hundreds more of her people. Elsa couldn't help but acknowledge that these three meant more to her than any other, more than she could ever have thought possible over a year ago. Kai, who'd been a part of her life since the day she was born and who'd raised her and Anna like the daughters he never had. Kristoff, who'd forgiven her and befriended her, and who loved her sister in spite of all the times she blundered and flubbed and said the wrong thing.

And Anna … Anna, Anna. _Oh_, Anna!

"Put that on," she said now, waving vaguely at the garment. "And we need to get you some clean water. You must drink … and you probably need a bath."

Anna gaped indignantly. "I—"

But Elsa spoke over her. "It's the water," she explained, looking at her sister urgently. "The contagion is in the water."

Anna was having a hard time following. "Arendelle …"

"All of it. Everyone." Elsa brought her hands to her head. She was speaking in fragments, hardly aware of what she was saying. "We have to get you something else …"

"What about Kristoff?" Anna interrupted, unaware that she was repeating the exact same question he'd uttered in his last conversation with the queen. It startled Elsa, and she gaped for a moment, unable to form words.

"He's … all right," she stammered. "He's all right, Anna."

How could she tell her otherwise? Especially _now_? Anna's eyes raked her own, looking for signs of falsehood. Elsa swallowed hard. It had not been an outright lie, really. Kristoff was in a better state than Anna. Perhaps her sister had been exposed to the pathogen earlier than he had. Or perhaps the slow progression in him had to do with the fact that his temperature always ran a few degrees colder than anyone else's, a strange fact that had come to light after the events of that frozen summer ...

Not that the queen was at liberty to ponder these ideas at the moment.

Anna, meanwhile, felt cold in spite of the heat glaring off her skin. "Will they be OK?" she asked. "Kai and … and the others?"

She was afraid for herself, now, too. Elsa could tell. She could see it in Anna's pale, stricken face.

"We're working on it," she replied, moving to sit next to her sister and attempting to speak in a soothing voice. "I'm not going to let anything happen to you."

It felt like a lie.


	12. Chapter 12

**QUICK NOTES:**

**You guys. I'll be off the grid for the month of July. **

**I would never leave a story unfinished (**_**quelle horreur!**_**); it just might have to be on hold for a few weeks. Unless I can pull myself together in the next couple days. Either way, it will get done.**

**Anyway, I haven't had time to proof as thoroughly as I like, so what follows may be a bit rough or wordy. My usual approach to finalizing a thing is to just prune the jujubes out of it …**

**Arendelle and its peeps aren't mine.**

* * *

**Chapter 12**

Olaf had been, quite frankly, _astonished_ to find the queen in tears, but when he saw Anna dozing fitfully in the grip of the of the very fever they'd been trying to protect her from, he nearly dissolved into tears himself. Which would have been disastrous for a snowman such as he.

The royal physician had been summoned to care for the princess, and so Olaf slipped into the corridor and made his way down the stairs—no easy task for a creature without knees. He wanted more than anything to stay by Anna's side, but he knew that he would just get in the way. Poor Olaf had a habit of getting underfoot when the people around him were preoccupied with unhappy thoughts.

He was generally unacquainted with such cheerlessness. He _wanted_ to be of _help_, but the only way he knew how was to offer frequent and enthusiastic hugs—and he was fairly certain that the physician would shoo him away if he attempted to do so at this time. So he decided that his personal brand of support would be put to best use in a visit to Kristoff and Sven.

Late autumnal rain clouds were collecting in the sky as he made his way along the path to the stables. He didn't think much of them, one way or the other—they simply seemed to match the collective mood of the kingdom itself. And this left him itching for companionship.

He found the ice master in the stables with Sven, of course, his arm slung around the reindeer's shoulder and his forehead leaning against his neck.

Olaf brightened.

"_Group hug_!" he cried, shuffling eagerly in and wrapping his arms around Sven's foreleg. The animal shook it halfheartedly but then gave up with a sigh.

Kristoff, for his part, reared back in surprise and looked at the creature.

"We weren't _hugging_," he said. "I was just tired."

He leaned over to retrieve a bucket of water that he must have been carrying for Sven. Moving it within reach of his friend's muzzle, he stepped back and hooked an old three-legged stool with his foot.

"How are you, Olaf?" he asked, dragging the stool towards him and then sitting listlessly upon it. His smile was weary but genuine. "It's good to see you."

Olaf released his hold on Sven and ambled closer to Kristoff. The man looked rather the worse for wear, to tell the truth. His movements were slow and sluggish, and his hair clung damply to his forehead.

"Wish I could say the same," said the snowman candidly. He'd never understood the subtleties involved in _decent_ conversation. "But you look awful."

Kristoff laughed. "Thanks."

"Not as awful as _her_, though," continued Olaf, weaving his fingers together anxiously. "If only we could—"

He didn't have the chance to finish, however, because at that moment Kristoff tried abruptly to stand. Too abruptly, it turned out. Instead of rising to his feet in the way that heroes do—all sturdy and poised, and gazing stoically off into the middle distance—he was overcome by a wave of dizziness and merely toppled off the stool.

"_WHAT_?" he demanded. He didn't ask the snowman to clarify—didn't require Olaf to explain whom he meant by "her." He just knew.

Beside him, Sven frisked in agitation.

"Didn't they tell you?" whispered Olaf.

But they hadn't—no one had told him. He'd been stuck in his loft, coughing up water and bile and waiting for someone—_anyone_—to tell him that the princess, at least, was safe from this wretchedness. Now he staggered to his feet, reaching out to Sven in order to steady himself.

"I've got to go," he murmured.

He reckoned that he had a little longer than the others—a momentary stay bought unknowingly by the snow queen, herself, once upon a time. But Anna didn't have that luxury. He needed to get to her, and he needed to get to her _now_.

The snowman understood. Of course Kristoff had to go: this was right and true.

But then Kristoff shivered in spite of—or maybe because of—the fever, and this did not escape Olaf's notice.

"You're gonna need help," he said decisively.

* * *

Anna swung her bare feet over the edge of the bed and slid to the floor. Outside her window, she could see the oppressive weight of low-hanging clouds beginning to crowd the sky. It would be cold, but she was already feeling such extremes of temperature that she couldn't be bothered much by the elements.

She had to wait for a woozy swell to pass over her, which it did with a rush in her ears and an odd wafting sensation that reminded her of lying on her back in the sea. When she felt a little stronger, she slipped into her shoes and located a winter cape from the pile of discarded clothes on her floor.

Elsa had fallen asleep in a chair by the window, curled up with only slightly less tension in her body than she carried when awake. She was frowning, now.

Anna pulled a blanket from her bed and tucked it around her sister. Not that she needed it, of course—but it was a tender gesture, and Anna thought that perhaps Elsa was in need of those more than anything right now. She knew, as she'd tossed and turned and chased after elusive dreams in her sleep, that Elsa had been afraid to touch her. Above all else, the queen feared that she would harm those she loved with her powers, and so she shrank from them at the same time that she longed for them to comfort her.

Poor Elsa.

She was exhausted, now. She had not been sleeping well at night, and she was both physically and emotionally drained by the demands of keeping her city alive—not to mention the effort required to control her magic at a time such as this. It did not appear that she would wake any time soon, so if Anna was going to escape from her room, now was the time to do it.

She leaned over and touched her fevered lips to Elsa's cold forehead. Then she slipped out of the room.

The corridor was empty. Much to everyone's grief, the staff had been slowly depleted by the disease over time, and there was no one to watch over the princess's chambers. Neither did she encounter a single living soul as she descended the staircase leading to the castle's service entrance. She stepped unevenly, stopping often to rest against a wall or ride out a new wave of dizziness, and it occurred to her as she clung to the banister that she would never make it the stables. Not like this.

But she _would_ get outside these walls, and she _would_ feel the cool air against her burning skin. She would do that, at least. And so Anna made it to the doorway without incident, and after waiting behind a cupboard for a pair of scullery maids to pass, she opened it and left the palace behind.


	13. Chapter 13

**NOT-SO QUICK NOTES: **

**OK, so I think I'm going to make this the last chapter I post until my midsummer revels have ended. I'll be back in August, and this seems like a nice place to hit the pause button.**

**If there's one thing I **_**abhor**_**, it's over-sentimentality. The thing is, I happen to be an excessively sentimental person. So I'm always trying to write with restraint. It's very hard for me to wrap up stories such as these without stepping over that line—especially since the characters are all wound pretty tight emotionally, at the moment.**

**So if you think this chapter strays into maudlin territory, let me know. If you don't think it does, let me know that, too—I'm a sucker for positive reinforcement. Just please be gentle. I'm sensitive.**

**Anyway, I feel kind of good about this one because I think I've managed to stay on the acceptable side of the mawkishness divide. We'll see … **

* * *

**Chapter 13**

Elsa slept as though she'd been bewitched. No one disturbed her—no servants to deliver the tea (they had been instructed to place a setting just outside the door), no statesmen to discuss policy (the few well enough to do so were closeted in with the equally few corps of engineers), and no sister to launch herself from the shadows as a means of torturing the queen.

She was alone.

From the window of her sister's room, she might have looked down upon the broad palace courtyard. A year ago, after the _incident_ with Hans, she had turned that space into a skating rink for the entire city. It was not perhaps a very _vast_ or a very _grand_ enclosure by certain standards, but to the two people trying desperately to find each other there, it was infinite.

By this time, the lowering clouds had begun to mingle with the sea air to create an odd, misting sort of precipitation. And yet Olaf would not be deterred from helping Kristoff reach the princess.

"Stay with Sven."

Olaf shook his head.

"It's too damp out there. Your flurry will dissolve!"

But they both knew that Olaf's flurry was the least of his concerns on a day such as this, when the wind had a bitter edge to it and the sky became more and more threatening. No, it wasn't the flurry that troubled them … because while the air was cold enough to keep Olaf in shape on his own, it was _not_ cold enough to turn moisture into snow. And if that dark sky released what it was presently holding, the snowman _himself_ would dissolve.

Still, Olaf ignored the man's concern.

"You know," he said aimlessly, as though they were chatting over sandwiches on a sunny day, "Elsa saved me from the heat once." He found an empty packing crate and pushed it up against the wall by the stable door. "If only she could do the same for you and Anna. And all the others …"

Kristoff shook his head. "I don't think a flurry will work for us, Olaf."

"That's not what I meant," returned the snowman. He wiggled his fingers. "She's got cold hands."

Kristoff narrowed his eyes. _What_?

But Olaf abandoned the thought and set his himself the task of clambering up onto the crate. Then he stretched his odd, sundered little body to reach the fastening of the door. It didn't seem to occur to him that Kristoff could do this in half a second, but neither did Kristoff move to help him.

"You shouldn't go out in this," he insisted.

Olaf didn't respond. He merely stretched further to unpin the door latch.

Kristoff made a restless movement. He felt prickly and hot and, well, this was ridiculous. Anna was in her room, at the moment, and she was sick—really sick. And there was no longer any reason for him to protect her from … himself.

He had to get to her, but instead he was arguing with a snowman.

Olaf turned and gaped at him as though he'd said all of this out loud. Maybe he had; he couldn't tell. Everything seemed to have taken on a dreamlike quality …

But if Kristoff had uttered his thoughts aloud, the snowman didn't reply. Instead, he peered at the ice deliverer with a worried expression.

"Neither should you," he said. And then he unlatched the door and tottered out into the courtyard.

Kristoff glared after him, raked a hand through his hair, and tugged his hat down over his head.

On a clear day, when a man had his usual wits about him, it was rather a pleasant walk from the stables to the castle gate. But this was not a clear day, and the two lonely figures that were making their way to the postern by the kitchens, where Kristoff hoped to gain admittance, were neither of them fit for a stroll. As they trudged across the flagstones, the chill mist began to coagulate into a drizzle. And then the drizzle into a shower. And then, when they were just halfway to the service entrance, the shower turned into a dense, freezing rain. It dripped from his hair and into his eyes, ran tendrils down his collar, soaked through his heavy wool gakti.

Kristoff, at this point, was not entirely lucid. And Olaf …

Olaf began to disintegrate with every step.

Above them, on the castle's second floor, near a window that looked out over the square, Elsa began to stir. And before them, her arms pressed tightly across her body as though this might shelter her from the downpour, knelt Anna.

Kristoff stopped dead in his tracks—actually _stopped_—and stared disbelievingly through the storm. It couldn't be her. Not here. Not like this … But there was no mistaking those braids, even from halfway across the court, even through a veil of sheeting rain.

He spoke her name but his voice was lost in the torrent …

* * *

She had been barely three steps from the door when she'd felt her muscles begin to seize and spasm. She'd cried out—first in surprise, then in pain. But by the time she'd been able to collect enough strength to project her voice for help, the sky had unleashed itself upon the city as though determined to wash away its impurities. Anna had been seeking, if nothing else, to breath the free air; instead she thought she might drown.

She was weak and disoriented by the undulating shroud of water, so she sank to her knees and laid her palms against the flagstones. As though this would stop her world from spinning. As though she could anchor her febrile thoughts to this place, this moment. Meanwhile, the cramping sensation in her abdomen returned, and she curled in on herself. It blazed through her body, burned into her throat. She retched and gasped for air. And then she began to cry.

Somewhere a thin call wavered against the rushing sound of the rain. She could not make it out—where it came from or by whom—and so she closed her eyes and paid it no heed. It was nothing, just a wisp of some kind, a hallucination.

Moisture crept through her clothing. She could feel the chill sinking into her skin, into her marrow, where it would linger like an aching, inexorable fog. When the rain turned to sleet it seemed to penetrate her joints, slurry her blood, and condense between her very synapses. She couldn't get up, couldn't move her arms or legs. She couldn't even lift her head … It hurt too much.

But then she felt a pressure on her arm, followed by a voice—incoherent, at first—slowly resolving itself into something familiar. A timber, a cadence, a warm humming reverberation.

"_Anna_."

She surfaced, becoming aware of a hand on her shoulder, a shadowy figure in the rain. It pulled her close, wrapped its arms around and beneath her, lifted her gently from the ground. She rested her head against its shoulder, his shoulder.

"Kristoff," she breathed.

He tightened his grip.

"I've got you," he said, and repeated it again and again and again. "I've got you."


	14. Chapter 14

**QUICK NOTES:**

**Arendelle and its peeps aren't mine.**

* * *

**Chapter 14**

The queen of Arendell woke to an empty room and nearly froze the world again.

But she didn't. Instead, she closed her eyes and focused on the chill quickening in and along her arms, the palms of her hands, her tapering fingers. The magic seemed to expand within her like water swelling into its frozen state. It would not take much for her to release it into the world, as she had done once before. After all, she was _frightened_. Her sister had slipped away in the night, and the girl was burning as certainly as was the rest of the kingdom. And while the cold could do no harm to its sovereign, it could _still_ overwhelm her if she let it.

She took a deep breath. Anna could not have gotten far in her condition. Elsa would find her within the castle and bring her back to this room, and in the meantime she would _not_ turn the city into an elaborate sepulcher of rime and hoarfrost.

The sensation in her fingertips receded. She could feel the air's frigidity peak and then stabilize, and a last chill current teased the curtains once before expiring. Flames sputtered back to life along the hearth. When she had composed herself as best she could, Elsa opened her eyes and noted with some satisfaction that she could no longer see her breath. She lunged for the door. There was no need to deliberate: she knew _exactly_ where Anna would have gone, and so she hitched up her skirts and sprinted for the castle gate. Delicate stems of frost etched geometric patterns in the carpet at her feet, but they dissolved into the thread as quickly as they'd appeared. The queen _was_ overwhelmed, this was certain. But she had learned to restrain her fear, and therefore her magic, in all instances except one.

She would _not_ lay her hands on her sister—not for any length of time, not when she felt the power actually _coursing_ through her _fingers_. Nothing could persuade her to do this, no matter _what_ Olaf said. The very thought of freezing the princess, or any living thing, through the influence of her touch sent her into a panic that would no doubt mean the end of Arendelle forever. It had happened before, that one time, when in her despair she had caused the accident about which they _never spoke_. When she had just about killed a man without laying a hand on him, and in the most hideous way possible.

_Slowly_.

Her magic was a bitter thing, unhurried and cruel. It idled in the hearts of those who were struck by it, poisoning the blood and glaciating the bones. It crept through every nerve ending, sank into the very marrow of a man, and all the while it moved slowly, slowly, ever slowly. Like a glacier through some strange arterial landscape. She knew this. She had witnessed it. Because after she'd ...

Well. After the _accident_, Kristoff was alive for a _week_ where a man under any other circumstance would have perished within hours of nightfall. He claimed to remember none of this, and perhaps it was true. But she wasn't so sure. He must have felt it, the pain of this incremental freeze, before he fell at last into something like a hypothermic coma. Had it been a relief, to slip away like that? She would never know, but those long summer days and abbreviated nights on the mountain haunted him, she could tell. It haunted them both.

How could she have done that to him? How could she risk doing the same to Anna?

No. It did not bear thinking. She knew, now, what her magic was capable of. Hers was a preternatural cold. It was not meant to touch the fragile hearts of men. Or women, for that matter. So she didn't think about taking Anna's fever from her—didn't think that she could, with her _bare hands_, quell the fire that at this moment consumed her city. She wouldn't even _consider_ the possibility that her power could be used to save her people rather than slaughter them.

The queen shuddered and suppressed a sob. She reached the stairs and turned the balustrade into a sinuous whorl of ice.

She knew her sister's heart. She knew that Anna craved freedom and friendship and the warmth of another person's touch—a hand on her wrist, a playful shove or an easy embrace. The princess had been deprived of these things for most of her life, save for the parental affections of Gerda and Kai—who nevertheless kept a respectful distance from the royal daughters.

Kristoff tried to do the same, but she made it so _difficult_. The princess nudged and poked and elbowed him, demonstrating a ruthlessness in her behavior that Elsa hadn't known she was capable of. She danced around him in her enthusiasm, crowded him physically and invaded his space. He'd responded with a funny mix of alarm and confusion, at first. The queen noticed, and so she'd chided her sister in the privacy of their chambers.

"Why must you tease him, Anna?"

And Anna had laughed.

"He's so easily, I don't know, _bumfuzzled_," she'd replied, speaking as much with her hands as with words. "He's just this huge ball of bumfuzzlement."

"Of _what_?"

But the princess ignored her. "It's adorable."

Elsa hadn't known how to respond to that. Adorable? Baby rabbits were adorable. Glazed ceramic models of children at play were adorable. Miniaturized _furniture_ was adorable. But preposterously large ice harvesters with an inability to talk to strangers? Well ...

She didn't know the first thing about the sort of attachment that Anna was developing for Kristoff. She understood love to be something she felt for her sister, for her people, for the mountains and fjords of her homeland. It was familial and affectionate and protective, sometimes _ferociously_ so. But it certainly wasn't ...

"_Bumfuzzled_? Is that a _word_?"

…

…

...

...

"Maybe."

Anna had said this entirely without embarrassment, back then, because talking about Kristoff as though he were an overgrown puppy was far easier than talking about Kristoff in any other way. But things were different now. Anna was lonesome and afraid, and she needed a friend. So she would be trying to get to him. Elsa was sure of it.

And Elsa was right.

She found them in one of the forerooms that lay adjacent to the palace entryway. Of course, she'd been aiming for the door itself until she detected movement and sound coming from another place entirely. Low voices and slippery tracks of rainwater led her there.

It was a modest room, furnished with darkly stained and upholstered pieces in a palette of olive and fawn. Someone had stoked the fire—probably Gerda, who dithered about the place, anxiously directing those members of the staff who were well enough to tend to the princess. The woman had amassed a small hoard of blankets and was using them to swaddle both Anna and Kristoff to the point of suffocation.

They were soaked to the skin, those two. Anna lay curled on her side on a chaise beside the hearth, alternately shivering and pushing against her blankets. Someone had helped her out of her drenched clothes and into a clean nightgown. Her hair was damp with rainwater and perspiration, though Gerda had tenderly plaited it in the way she'd done when Anna was a child. Her skin was flushed; a sheen of sweat lay thinly across her cheekbones.

Kristoff watched her with dark eyes in the fluctuating light of the fire. His expression was dull and unreadable. He'd carried Anna this far, out of the storm and into the castle, but though she was a slip of a girl she was still a full-grown human being at eighteen years—or very nearly so. And Kristoff's strength had been ebbing long before he'd set foot in that courtyard and its developing squall. Gerda discovered them at the back door—two half-drowned _children_ (because no self-preserving adult would behave with such _complete_ lack of _sense_). She'd shepherded them into the nearest room with an active fire in the grate, and Kristoff had laid the princess gingerly on a couch before collapsing, exhausted, in the chair that was offered to him.

Now the air of the room was filled with an unwholesome stillness. For the briefest moment, Elsa wanted to turn away from it. But then she moved, her eyes making brief contact with the housemistress before turning to land on her sister. Kristoff saw this and attempted to stand, but she shook her head at him. It was neither the time nor the place to observe formalities. He understood but made no further acknowledgement of her presence, just turned his head and closed his eyes.

Anna was sleeping. Her expression was troubled, and she made fitful movements beneath her coverings. She seemed to murmur without producing sound—as if she were speaking to someone dear, someone close. It reminded the queen of those times that had been lost to them, before Anna's memories had been taken and altered, when the girls shared a room and whispered to each other long into the winter night. Now, Elsa knelt beside her sister and reached for her hand. When she saw that her own were feathered with frost, however, and she stopped herself.

No one spoke. Elsa could not find her voice.

"Your Majesty," ventured Gerda. She wrung her hands. "Oh, thank goodness you're here ..."

Elsa acknowledged her kindly, but remained silent for some time. _Calm down_, she instructed herself. _You can handle this_. She allowed these words to resonate in her mind before speaking again, and by the time she was ready to do so the pulse of her magic had become more or less manageable.

"Have you sent for the physician?" she asked at length. Her hands convulsed and so she fisted them in her lap.

"Yes, ma'am."

Elsa's eyes shifted toward Kristoff.

"Perhaps you can find him some dry clothes?" she suggested quietly. It was necessary, of course. But it was also a silent dismissal.

Gerda nodded and excused herself.

Somewhere, a clock ticked its metronomic pulse in the shadows. And the three companions—each perhaps thinking or dreaming that the others were all they had in the world—waited for the physician to arrive. Anna, murmuring restively; Kristoff, sleeping in spite of his best efforts to stay alert for her; and Elsa, the queen of the realm, fighting tears as she crouched beside her feverish, foolish sister.

_Stupid girl_, she thought, though it wasn't entirely clear whether she meant Anna or herself.

A few tears slipped past her best defenses, then. They ran cold tracks down her colder cheeks, but she no longer tried to restrain them. She leaned forward and held Anna's hand until the magic in her own grew to be too much. Then she returned it softly to the blanket and bowed her head.

* * *

**This may be a little rough around the edges. I've actually been going back and developing and editing previous chapters, so this one will probably get a similar treatment at some point.**


	15. Chapter 15

**QUICK NOTES:**

**Hello, everyone. I'm home, briefly, before going off the grid again. So I thought I'd try to get this chapter out before you lost interest in the whole project altogether.**

**I absolutely HATED Chapter 14, so I've been tinkering with it if you have any interest. Still not sure what it is that's bothering me—or whether I've made it better or worse—but there you are.**

**Arendelle and its peeps aren't mine.**

* * *

**Chapter 15**

Kristoff was dimly aware of the royal physician moving about the room, knees crepitating as he bent to examine his charge. Someone else was scraping ash around the firebox to the right of him. Against this sound, the physician's voice was barely distinguishable. He spoke in a low tone—not to Anna, and probably not to the person who was tending, now, to the tinder and brushwood, though Kristoff was too disoriented to figure out who it was. He cracked his eyelids open a bit to see …

And the voices stopped.

"I think that perhaps we should continue this conversation elsewhere," remarked the physician.

The response was subdued; a woman's voice, but Kristoff couldn't make out whom it belonged to.

"Thank you, Your Majesty," the old man replied.

_Oh, _thought Kristoff. _The queen, then._

That made sense_._

He closed his eyes again and listened to their receding footsteps: one set heavy and deliberate, the other light and somehow insubstantial. The drawing room door creaked on its hinges, and a third set of steps—Gerda's?—hastened from the fireside to catch up to the others. Then the door closed behind them, and Kristoff was alone.

For a moment, he idled in a sort of dream state, not asleep but also not quite awake. Neither did he feel hot nor cold, thirsty nor sated, in pain nor at ease. He was simply _none_ of these things and _all_ of them at once. In fact, he was really only conscious of those loose physical paradoxes as they related to his current state of being—which was bumfuzzled, at best.

_Bumfuzzled_ …

Where had _that_ come from? It wasn't a word at all, really. In fact, it sounded like just the sort of invented prattle that Anna would come up with and then try to pass off as legitimate. Like the time she described a particularly lavish state dinner as a _monumentous_ affair. Or the time when she snuck a piece of chocolate from the kitchens even though she'd "given it up" for Lent, and she'd announced to Kristoff that it was positively _sacrilicious_.

"That's not even a word," he'd remarked, unaware that Elsa had said much the same thing to the princess on more than one occassion.

"Sure it is."

"No," he said. "It isn't"

Now he opened his eyes—all the way, this time—and sat up as best he could. It appeared that he'd been dozing in an elaborately curved armchair and under several mismatched blankets. The latter were a little damp because, he observed matter-of-factly, _he_ was a little damp. His _clothes_ were, at any rate, and his hair. This realization caused him to shiver, and a deep chill settled upon him in spite of the room's heat.

But he didn't really care about all that, at the moment. Because he saw _her,_ there on the couch, and she was _looking_ at him. And everything that had happened before now resurfaced in his poor, addled head: the conversation with Olaf; the long-awaited and yet thoroughly disheartening reunion with Anna; the rain and the rain and the rain. The princess peered at him languidly, but in a way that was also strangely attentive. Watchful. As though she'd been observing him sleep …

He blinked back at her, at a loss for words, so that she was the first to speak. Which is how it would have been under ordinary circumstances, anyway.

"Hi," she said.

He'd been looking right at her. It should have come as no surprise that she would say something, because Anna _always_ had _something_ to _say_. But Kristoff still startled at the sound of her voice like a deer caught by a pair of soft-pedaling hikers, and this made her smile. He scrubbed a hand through his hair, feeling slow and stupid.

"Hi," he muttered. And then, taken by a sudden effusiveness and wishing to elaborate, he added: " Um ... hi."

She regarded him without further comment, her expression raw and weary. She was pleased to see him, though. That much even _Kristoff_ could understand. He felt pressured to speak, had so much to tell her, but of course he could think of nothing to say. So he fidgeted in his chair a bit, looked at and away from the princess a few times, and opened his mouth—and closed it—in what amounted to be several false starts before he managed, eventually, to articulate a thought.

Meanwhile, Anna was studying him with an expression that managed to be both arch and affectionate at the same time. He grew more flustered. She was too quick for him, too canny even now, when her senses were no doubt dulled by the fever. There was no way he could keep up with her. Seriously, why had ever tried? How could he _possibly_ have thought that he could make a suitable companion for this girl? Or ... _woman_, rather. _Princess_.

She understood differently, of course. And while it may have been that Anna was naive about some things ... or, well, most things, really ... she was unequivocal about this. Anna knew Kristoff. It was like one of those strange singularities that some people had, like the ability to read two pages at once, or to mentally calculate numbers up to 39 figures, or play Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto Number One, flawlessly and without any musical training, upon a single hearing. Anna could interpret Kristoff's moods _precisely_, better than she could her own, better perhaps than he could himself. For some inexplicable reason, she just _got_ him in the same way that he _got_ ice. Or Sven. It was tacit and intuitive and, as far as she knew, entirely one-sided.

But it was as true as anything in her experience. And so she watched over him with sense of kindness and tenderness and maybe something even a little more.

"Use your words," she teased, and Kristoff shot her a look.

"Were you ..." He grimaced. His voice had come out thready and rough, and it made him feel small. He tried again. "Were you, uh, watching me?"

Much better_. _

Anna raised her eyebrows. "_What_?"

Her tone was off. Wary, evasive. But Kristoff, being _Kristoff_—and showing the incompetence of a man who'd spent the majority of his life in meaningful conversation with sentient rocks and an enabling reindeer—forged ahead with the question.

"Um, sleep?" he said, by way of clarification. "I mean, me?"

Anna seemed to comprehend his meaning in spite of this tortured syntax, and her response was to rear back against the couch with an expression of horror etched across her face. She scrunched up her nose.

"What?" she cried. "_No_!"

Kristoff nodded, at once embarrassed.

_"_Who even _does_ that?" she went on. "That's just ... _Ew_!"

"Okay."

"I mean, _noooooo _sir." She pulled an errant strand of hair from her cheek and gestured vaguely. "Not me. No way."

"Right. I know. I was just ..."

He'd said the wrong thing. _Of_ _course_ he'd said the wrong thing. And now he'd gone and affronted the princess. He wanted to drop his head in his hands.

Anna, though, continued to splutter through her objections until, finally, she ran out of steam. Then it was her turn to feel embarrassed.

She'd protested too much, hadn't she? Any fool could see it. She'd gone and done something _weird. _Like, _again_. And she'd dug in her heels and made Kristoff uncomfortable, which, in her defense, was an easy thing to do. But she'd just kept going, _on_ and _on_, asserting and reasserting the fact that she was _not_ in _any_ way engaging in _any_ sort of weird behavior. Which, of course, she was.

But Anna was a terrible liar.

They avoided each other's eyes for a beat or two. Anna traced an invisible pattern on the sofa and huffed mightily. Then she turned her head and murmured something that Kristoff couldn't hear.

He frowned. "What?"

She murmured again, but he just shook his head. Anna sighed.

"_Yes_," she hissed. "Maybe. A little."

He didn't respond immediately. Instead, he just crossed his arms, feeling vindicated.

"That's ... kind of creepy," he said at last.

She snorted, and the familiar sound pinched his heart cruelly. It was so crude, coming from her. So unbecoming of a princess. But it was also … endearing. Sweet, somehow. Like she couldn't be _bothered_ to appear as anything but herself around him. Which was how it always was with her.

Except now she was sick. He could see it beneath the flush of her skin.

"There's not anything _else_ to do," she countered. Then she smiled, and it was impish and familiar and _just_ so _normal_. "You're entertaining," she said. "Didn't Sven ever tell you? You talk in your sleep."

He would have blushed if he weren't already running a temperature, himself. Instead, he looked at his feet, the moulded ceiling, the various decorative knickknacks along the mantlepiece—as though these things were of the remotest interest to him. As though they were just _infinitely_ fascinating.

"What, uh … what did I say?" he asked, affecting a casual tone. Not that it mattered or anything.

She laughed and ignored the question. He tried to smile back—he really did—but she looked so small, in spite of her grin, ensnared in all those blankets like some fragile animal. It troubled him to see her like that, and he felt a reflexive tightening in the back of his throat.

Anna noticed. She narrowed her eyes.

"Are you all right?" she demanded.

And he just stared at her.

"Don't worry about me," he said finally. He felt an overwhelming sense of defeat. How could she even _ask_ him that?

They fell silent. Outside, the rain continued to batter the window casings. It was turning to sleet, now, and periodically the wind drove it hard against the glass. Soon, the snow would come. They were on the brink of winter, after all, and the temperature was dropping precipitously. Unless, of course, it was the queen …

Suddenly, Anna tensed. She inhaled sharply through her teeth and screwed her eyes shut. Kristoff wrestled with his own blankets and rose clumsily to his feet. The room pitched once and then righted itself.

"What is it?" he snapped. His voice was unexpectedly harsh.

Anna didn't answer. She was holding her breath. Some deep and abiding hurt was seizing her from within, and Kristoff began to panic. He moved toward her and then faltered, glancing at the door. He should get help ...

"_Don't_!" Anna cried. She reached for him.

But Kristoff didn't know what was wrong, couldn't imagine what she was feeling—not yet anyway—and so he had no idea how he could make her better.

"What can I do?" he whispered, but she just buried her face in the pillow.

He had never felt so helpless—not when he'd found himself short of rope at the top of a two hundred foot cliff, not when he'd broken through ice into frigid water, not even when he'd felt the very snow beneath his feet shudder and slide out from under him. He hadn't enough experience with people to know how to care for them in times like this. As a child, growing up in the clean mountain air, Kristoff had hardly ever fallen ill. And he was fairly certain that the methods of doctoring favored by your average human being were far, _far_ different from those employed by the trolls.

So he just stood there, his arms hanging loosely—uselessly—at his sides, paralyzed by his fear for her.

Until she let out a slow breath. And another. She opened her eyes and uttered a shaky sigh.

"Can you—" she began. She moved beneath the blankets, shifting her position on the sofa. "Can you sit with me? Um, here?"

Kristoff blinked at her. It occurred to him that he, too, had been holding his breath, so he let it out and waited for his head to clear. Anna was looking at him expectantly.

"Yeah," he muttered, leaning down to help her make room for him. He supported her weight with a hand on each shoulder, holding her carefully, afraid she might break. "Of course."

Then he sat on the end and she settled against him, her head tucked in against the crook of his shoulder. His hand hovered above her for a moment—he didn't know where to put it—before finally coming to rest above her waist. Lightly. Awkwardly. He tried to give her a reassuring pat on the hip, which just came off _wrong_. So he settled for holding her in his own, tentative way. Like she was a wounded bird.

She was warm, though, _really_ warm. Hot even. He closed his eyes and willed Elsa to come back—with or without the physician. He knew she hadn't gone far. They were just outside the room, in fact, their feet casting shadows beneath the crack of the door. So he waited - impatiently - because it had become clear to him that no doctor could save the princess.

But Elsa could. Elsa could do it.

Beside him, Anna stirred. "Kristoff?"

He twitched at the sound of her voice, then tried to relax for her. She was breathing evenly, now, against his side.

"Yeah?"

She didn't say anything, at first, so that Kristoff assumed she'd fallen back to sleep again. He took a deep breath and tried to find a more comfortable position for himself without disturbing her.

But then, in a whisper, she said, "_I love you, too_."


	16. Chapter 16

**NOT-SO-QUICK NOTES:**

**So I'm at peace with Chapter 14. The improvements were minor, but I'm generally accepting of them at this point. Now all my hate is reserved for Chapter 15. I'm not going for false modesty, here: the quality of writing just isn't what I want it to be.**

**I've gone back and tinkered, as I do, and so you're welcome to check out the changes to Chapter 15 if you like. They don't really kick in until Anna and Kristoff finally (_finally_!) have a conversation in present time. That moment deserves a better payoff. I still don't think I've gotten it to where I want it to be, so I'll continue to keep you informed in these notes.**

**If you'd rather just read on, then by all means do!**

* * *

**Chapter 16**

Elsa was wearing her gloves again. She'd asked Gerda to bring them down with the tea, and when this had been done she'd reached for them with a mingled sense of regret and relief. The housemistress watched, tea service balanced before her, as Elsa slipped back into this ritual of hiding her beautiful, beautiful hands. It was a terrible thing to see, the queen withdrawing as she had done so many years ago. A sad thing. A _dangerous_ thing ...

She had not agreed with the late King Agdar, back then, when he'd determined that the only way to save his daughter was to isolate her. Gerda was in no position to voice her distress for the child, of course, and yet voice it she had. Were it not for the princess's astonishing reaction to her father's intent, Gerda would've been soundly dismissed for her impertinence.

But she hadn't been, and this was because Elsa had released a cry of such savage, wide-eyed despair that the staff cowered in uncomprehending shock at the sound of it. Gerda, who'd been dismissed to her quarters at the time, could hear it resounding from an entirely different floor of the castle.

She would never forget the violence of Elsa's tears, on that occasion, her wild keening_ hysteria_. It was as though her father, in reprimanding the woman who waited on her, had threatened the girl's very existence. Much later, it would occur to Gerda that perhaps she'd been one of the few remaining connections Elsa had to a world that was rapidly slipping from her fingers. At the time, however, she feared that the poor child had lost her mind.

She hadn't been present to witness the full manifestation of Elsa's wretchedness, then, though the staff fell to whispering highly speculative tales of ice creeping along the lintel, spindrifts of snow clouding forcefully from beneath the bedroom doors, an unholy wind rattling the hinges. Then as now, Gerda would not tolerate such talk in her presence. It was rubbish - pure rubbish and nothing more. But every once in awhile, Gerda would think of that child in a rare moment of idleness. She imagined the girl's unruly hair, released from its conservative hold; her frenzied eyes turning into a strange, more cutting iteration of their usual blue; her pale, stiffening fingers clutched at her fragile, frightened heart.

Elsa was eight years old at the time.

The king had relented, of course. Gerda was summoned later that evening, and it was clear that he and his wife had been shaken by the _fear_ and the _power_ that could both issue from and do such incomprehensible damage to their beloved daughter. And make no mistake, beloved she was, for the housemistress had attended to their quiet weeping for the child on more than one occasion.

The royal family never quite recovered from the ravaged hearts of King Agdar and Queen Idun. They'd wished to save the princess from herself; instead, they managed only to insulate her from her gifts, and the consequences were tragic.

Now Gerda watched the grown princess as she placed her hand on the door to the drawing room. Elsa hesitated, waiting for the chill to quicken along her splayed fingers. It did not.

_Good_, she thought to herself dolefully. _Keep it under control_.

She couldn't let the magic run its course in her, because if she gave into it _this_ time—under _these_ circumstances—she was likely to do far more damage than she had at her coronation. What had Anna called it? The _snowpocalypse_. Elsa couldn't help but smirk. And just like that, the _incident_ with Hans seemed like so much frippery, a petty squabble between siblings. Nothing to freeze the _kingdom_ over. But this? This was no trifle. Anna wasn't about to rush into _marriage_; she was maybe going to ...

The queen took a deep breath. She kindly dismissed the physician. Then she opened the door.

He'd told her that there was nothing he could do for the princess. That her fever would increase until her body could no longer accommodate for such elevated temperatures. That, most likely, she wouldn't make it through a second night like this one. And Elsa had buried her face in her hands and wept.

After all those years alone, isolated from the world and withheld from her sister; after their turbulent reunion; after _months_ of having to learn all over again how to understand, how to console, how to forgive … after _all_ of this, Elsa was going to lose Anna forever. And she couldn't bear it.

She couldn't _bear_ it.

Her eyes were a telltale pink when she stepped into the room, followed shortly by Gerda with the tea. And while she had gained control of her tears, they'd still left traces of rime on her cheeks. She did not think to wipe them away.

Behind her, the housemistress deposited their tea and, moving entirely without sound, withdrew from the room.

Elsa stood alone. She observed her sister lying curled up against Kristoff, the two of them on the sofa, deeply asleep. It was an intimate portrait, full of tenderness and clarity, a sweet distillation of all that was good in them both: her innocence and his constraint, her passion and his kindness. It was simple, really, those things that made her love them. And yet she felt, in that instant, like an intruder. Like she was violating something wonderful and sincere and not at all for her. Suddenly, she felt the gloves chafe against her skin.

Kristoff stirred, then. He lifted his head and looked blearily at his surroundings as though he wasn't quite sure how he'd gotten there. Elsa waited while he took in the folded pile of clothing, placed neatly on a table for him to change into; the tea service rapidly cooling along the sideboard; the fireplace, the clock, and then ... the queen.

Their eyes met, and without a thought toward what she was doing or why, Elsa clasped her hands behind her back. She did not have to tell him what the physician had said. The tinge of frost on her cheeks betrayed her.

"Kristoff—" she began, but he cut her off.

"You've got to do it, Elsa."

She blinked at him, confused.

"What are you _talking_ about?" she countered, searching his face for signs of greater coherence. But his eyes were too bright; she could see this even in the subdued light from the fireplace, and the realization of what it must mean alarmed her. "Kristoff, are you all right?"

He ignored the question.

"Bring down her fever."

Inside the gloves, Elsa's palms burned cold.

"Who told you that?" she demanded. "_Olaf_?"

He didn't answer right away. Instead, his gaze turned inward like he was searching in his mind for the remnants of some long-forgotten conversation. To Elsa, though, it appeared that he was drifting away from her, and she grew afraid for him. She took half a step forward and uttered his name, dreading the possibility that he wouldn't respond. But then he frowned at her, and his eyes were clear and sad.

"What is it?" she asked. "What's wrong?" She looked around the room, noticing at last a certain conspicuous absence there. "Where's Olaf?"

Kristoff looked at her helplessly.

"He was outside," he murmured.

And she understood. The snowman had been caught in the storm ...

Elsa sank into a chair. "Poor Olaf," she whispered.

Kristoff said nothing, and they just sat for a beat, listening to the rain and the wind and the clock. And yet, for two people so acutely aware of how little time was left to them, neither marked its passing. They simply stared at the fire in the grate, lost in their own dark thoughts, until finally Elsa roused herself. She did not want to have this conversation, not now. Not _ever_, really. It was just too awful, came too close to the thing that had remained, for the most part, unacknowleged between them for the last eighteen months. Elsa fervently wished that it could continue to be so.

But it could not.

"Kristoff," she ventured, looking away from him. "I … I can't do that ... what you said."

She sensed his agitation. "Why not?" he asked. His voice was careful, restrained.

"You _know_ why not."

He shook his head. "I don't accept that, Elsa."

And she felt a flare of anger. It was unexpected, and she saw him shiver as the ice crept back along her fingertips.

"I've never used the magic like that before," she returned sharply. She met his eyes and saw distrust in them. Or perhaps it was skepticism. Either way, what right did he have to question her judgment on these matters? None. None, whatsoever. The illness must be impairing his good sense.

Yet there he was, watching her dubiously. Inciting her to greater levels of frustration. Outside, a surge of frigid air rattled the casements. She brought her hands to her temples and suppressed the urge to scream.

"You don't understand," she said instead. "I could _kill_ her!"

But Kristoff just narrowed his eyes. He understood, all right.

"She's going to die _anyway_," he shot back, his voice seething with bitterness. "Isn't that what you came to tell me?"

Elsa froze.

She stared at him, her mouth hanging open in shock. Somewhere deep within her, she felt a horrible, staggering sort of convulsion - as though, for one brief and interminable moment, her heart had stalled. As though he had struck her there and knocked the wind out of her.

Kristoff, for his part, was all too aware of the line he had crossed. It was so sudden - and so out of character for him - that he seemed completely incapacitated by the significance of what he had done. His eyes were impossibly wide; the color drained from his face. He was breathing heavily, and his skin was as slick with sweat as Elsa's was glaciated with frost.

She'd never seen him angry before. Not really. Frustrated, yes. Vexed, mildly provoked—usually by her sister—certainly. But not like this. Not at all like this. It frightened her, but she could see, now, that it frightened them both. And if Kristoff had in some token sense _struck_ her, he'd only done so with the full force of his grief, which was every bit as strong as the rest of him. And she could not fault him for that.

"I'm sorry," he said. His voice sounded both lost and urgent at the same time, if that was even possible, and Elsa was overwhelmingly moved by it. Poor Kristoff. Always fumbling for words and, often as not, mishandling them terribly. She could see the dispirited slump of his shoulders even now, under the sprawling form of her sister. "I'm sorry," he said again.

She protested, but he wasn't listening.

"I should go, maybe," he muttered. He shifted on the couch and brought his arm out from under the princess. "Sven'll be worried ..."

"Don't be ridiculous."

"It's fine."

Elsa shook her head. "You're not well," she insisted, and it was true. He wouldn't make it far in this state. But it was more than that. She didn't want him to leave her there. She didn't want him to go.

Kristoff studied the floor. "It was a terrible thing to say," he murmured.

"Don't," she retorted. "Just … don't."

At that moment, Anna seemed to agitate against her blankets and they watched her anxiously until she settled back against Kristoff's side. Elsa found herself wondering whether fragments of their conversation had reached her, filtered through the protective lens of her fevered, fractured dreams. She hoped not.

Again, they fell silent. And again, time seemed to slip away from them, expanding and contracting in odd, illusory bursts. It was impossible to tell, really, whether it was late afternoon or early evening in Arendelle, and Elsa found that she didn't much care.

Idly, she thought of the tea. How cold it must be, by now. She stole a glance at Kristoff and saw him worrying a string of loose threads on one of the blankets, his hands coming together around Anna's shoulder, knotting and reknotting each filament into a sturdy roseate. His fingers moved absently, expertly, in the way of the mountain people who dwelt far above the walls of Arendelle.

She could see that he was working through something, trying to untangle his own disordered thinking. At length, he did.

"Try it on me first," he said.

It was not what she expected, though if she were honest with herself she would have acknowledged that she hadn't had the slightest idea what _to_ expect in the first place. Either way, Kristoff's suggestion caught her completely off guard.

"_What_?" she spluttered. "_No_!"

"Elsa—"

But it was her turn to interrupt, now. "Are you _crazy_?" she demanded. She looked at him incredulously. "Have you forgotten what happened the _last_ time I froze you?"

And that was it. She'd put words to the thing they never talked about—the thing that _also_ happened that summer when Anna had the _incident_ with Hans. The thing that made Elsa so ashamed and Kristoff so uncomfortable and both of them so inclined to retreat to the relative safety of their high office or their even higher mountain. It was out there, now, and Elsa couldn't take it back.

Kristoff flinched. "That was an accident," he said uneasily.

"What _difference_ does it make?"

"A pretty big one," he returned, the anger flaring and receding in him quickly. "You've got it under control now."

But even as he said this, tendrils of ice began to curl up her arms and a shrill breath of air swept between them. The fire wavered and crouched in the grate, brought low by the current before returning to its former glory.

"Have I?" she asked.

Kristoff didn't answer. Instead, he struggled to sit up against Anna's weight and gazed at her sister meaningfully.

"We don't have time to think of anything else," he said firmly.

What he didn't add, but the truth of which they were both well aware, was that he only had a day or two left, anyway. There was no point in sparing him—especially if Anna couldn't be saved. Elsa looked down at the princess. She was limp in Kristoff's arms, her hair dark with sweat, her skin clammy to the touch. She appeared to be sleeping, but this was no ordinary sleep.

An expectant stillness filled the room. And then, for the second time in nearly as many years, the queen of Arendelle took off her gloves.


	17. Chapter 17

**QUICK NOTES:**

**I'm sorry, everyone, for the delay. It's August: work is back on, school is back on. It's simply harder to write. But I have ****not**** abandoned this story. **

**I've decided to post in spite of the fact that this chapter is shorter and less developed than I would like. I haven't taken the time to rework it like I usually do, but too much time has passed between updates. I had to publish something. As always, I will return to it and tinker.**

**It's a fixer-upper.**

**Arendelle and its peeps aren't mine.**

* * *

**Chapter 17**

"Hang on," said Kristoff. He was calm, purposeful. Gently, he gathered the princess in his arms and rearranged her, along with her blankets, so that no part of her body came in contact with his own. Then he turned his attention back to Elsa.

"Just in case," he said evenly.

Elsa nodded. She stood and took a reluctant step forward.

"Are you sure about this?"

She was nervous. Tiny slivers of ice seemed to agitate from her fingertips like embers from a fire, and so she buried her hands in her skirt to hide them from Kristoff. He didn't appear to notice.

"Yeah," he returned. Then he shrugged and offered up a wan smile.

He wasn't as confident as he let on—Elsa could see this plainly. But she was grateful, all the same, that he was trying to affect composure in this way. She studied his face for a moment, his disheveled hair, his careworn features. There was so much to say, so many regrets and apologies and pent-up admissions of guilt. And it was clear to her that they were not all for him—not really, though he was certainly deserving. Still, it was more than that. Because as she stood, now, poised to destroy the fever in Kristoff—or kill him—he'd come to represent something else entirely …

Elsa blinked. She shook herself. This was _not_ the time for contemplative navel-gazing. She needed to focus her attention on the _present_, on Kristoff. She had to pull herself together.

He was watching her now, his expression clear and pragmatic.

"It's all right," he said simply.

And she felt herself smiling back at him, then, her friend the rustic reindeer king—grumpy and graceless and blessedly, supremely uncomplicated. It _was_ all right. It would be. She'd make it so.

She squared her shoulders.

"Sit up straight," she commanded.

Her courage at this moment was a shallow thing, as substantive as a riffle of snowmelt. But she would feign the mettle of a queen until she believed it was legitimately hers. After all, if this sort of pretense worked for Kristoff, it would work for her. It had to. And anyway, this was all quite simple, wasn't it? By assuming a posture of strength, Elsa would become the strong woman her people needed her to be.

She told herself it made _perfect_ sense.

And if this worked? If she could use her magic to break the fever in Kristoff?

She could save Arendelle.

She could save _Anna_.

Her fingers began to prickle and sting.

"Here goes," she murmured.

She took a slow breath and relaxed into the cold, cupping her hands loosely before her. She saw that Kristoff swallowed nervously, in spite of himself, but he stayed put.

Elsa pursed her lips. She was very nearly eye level with him now. Imposing though she could be, she was not a tall woman. Still, Kristoff had enough height on him to match her, glare for glare, while seated—if he didn't slouch too much. It occurred to her that she would have to move fast if she wanted to prevent him from lashing out in her direction. The cold would be a shock, of course, and there was no way of knowing how he would respond to it this time. After all, the circumstances were completely different. For one thing, she was using it on him deliberately. For another, they had agreed that she would maintain her icy hold until she was certain it had worked on the fever.

Neither cared to question the depth of her certainty. It was an act both blind and desperate, and they knew it. But what choice did they have?

So Elsa allowed the magic to collect in the hollow of her hands, and without giving Kristoff a chance to recoil from her touch, she reached forward. Her fingers brushed his temples.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then his eyes widened. He shut them tight and his skin grew pale. He tried to turn away from her, but there was no strength in the movement. Elsa looked at him apologetically, tried to hold his gaze in order to offer him some assurance that this would all be over soon. But he kept his eyes closed.

She wanted to end it. Her magic was a terrible thing, twisted and cruel. She was foolish to believe that she could use it for anything other than violence and the occasional decorative flourish …

But surprisingly, remarkably, she did not let go. She rebuffed those uncertainties with all of the discipline she had once used to shut her sister out. It took tremendous self-control, refusing to let the fear overwhelm her. But if she were to control the magic, she needed to keep that fear at bay. Otherwise, they would be right back where they were the last time she let loose with her powers. Which meant that she wouldn't just break Kristoff's fever; she would freeze him beyond recovery.

The thought wormed its way into her consciousness and she snatched her hands away before her fear could become the reality. Breathing heavily, she stared at Kristoff.

His eyes were open.

"_Kristoff_?" she gasped.

But he just stared back at her, apparently in shock. Hastily, she pulled on her gloves and waved a tentative hand in front of his face. She grasped his shoulder and shook him a little.

_Oh, God_, she thought. What had she done?

And then he blinked—once, twice, several times more—and shot her a piercing, concentrated look. Elsa brought a hand to her mouth and suppressed a cry of relief.

"Kristoff …" she began, but it was a question.

He didn't answer. Why didn't he answer?

"Are you OK?" she breathed. She examined him fretfully. He _looked_ all right, in spite of the pallor of his skin and the general haggardness that seemed to befall all those who'd been affected by the fever.

But what if she'd gone too far?

Kristoff was moving, though. He brought a hand to his head and finally spoke. "I don't know ..." he said roughly.

Elsa sank to the table, relieved at the sound of his voice. He was conscious, capable of movement, and relatively coherent. But had their plan worked?

"Are you hurt?" she asked gently.

He shook his head, winced a little, and she understood. Headache.

"I'm sorry."

An arch look. As if to tell the queen to shut up. She felt better.

"OK," she said, relenting. "But, otherwise …" Gesturing vaguely. "Um … How do you feel?"

Silence. Then—

"Cold."

They considered this … Kristoff feeling _cold_ might be a sign that his fever had, indeed, been broken and his temperature was beginning to regulate normally again. In other words, he was cold because Elsa had made him so. But a chill might also simply be a symptom of the fever, itself; in which case, he was cold because the _fever_ made him so.

Either way, at that moment he was suddenly taken by a fresh wave of exhaustion, and he slumped back against the couch. Elsa reached out and draped one of Gerda's many blankets over him.

"I'm still alive," he murmured.

"What?"

"You didn't freeze me," he said. "I'm still here ..."

Elsa sat back against the table. She stole a glance at her sister, curled up on the far end of the sofa. Then she turned her gaze back to Kristoff. He was pale, true, but this was perhaps an improvement considering the unnatural flush of Anna's skin, the apathy in her limbs. And there was something else, too ... something in his eyes ...

He narrowed them at her now, as though suspicious of whatever it was that she'd been thinking, and she saw it. They were sharp. Keen. Fully alive in a way that she hadn't quite seen in them in _days_.

"I think it worked," she said breathlessly.

He regarded for a moment, and then nodded in a wondering sort of way, slowly and cautiously, as though wary of getting his hopes up.

"Can I—?" Elsa asked.

She made a hesitant gesture in his direction. The magic had subsided in her fingers by now. If Kristoff were still overly warm, she would know it.

He opened his mouth to respond but she didn't wait to hear what he had to say. She would need to act quickly if this thing had worked—really and truly worked. Her sister counted on it, Kai counted on it; the city of Arendelle counted on it. So she pressed her hand against his forehead, briefly, as she had done with Anna once before.

It was cool.


End file.
